


while it was raining

by Emlee_J



Series: Raining Verse [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, College Age Kagehina, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Kageyama is Temporarily a Cat, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Slow Burn, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 50,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22703515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emlee_J/pseuds/Emlee_J
Summary: "The smallest feline is a masterpiece" - Leonardo da VinciDespite a less than ideal high school volleyball career as a back bencher and failing his first year at university, Hinata Shouyou is still chasing his goal to play professional volleyball. But moving away to a hilly town for his dreams is more lonely than he expects - until the middle of a very rainy spring, when a black, blue-eyed cat shows up at his door.(A magical realism AU; Hinata and Kageyama did not meet in middle school, and never went to Karasuno together, their paths separate until one day Kageyama wakes up with more legs and fur than he had the day before.)
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Series: Raining Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906033
Comments: 404
Kudos: 1220
Collections: Haikyuu Fics That Light my soul on Fire





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> My first multi-chap Kagehina AU!! This is the result of several months of planning and writing and a LOT of worrying but it eventually turned out into a story I'm pretty proud to publish, and even prouder that I actually finished it. My only hope is that someone finds this as interesting and fun as I did while writing it - especially anybody who holds cats as close to their heart as I do. 
> 
> Special thanks to Yuzu and [my sister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazabaijan/pseuds/Hazabaijan) for allowing me to rant at them and read this over for me and just generally reassure me!!
> 
> Artwork for while it was raining:
> 
> [@caelestee](https://twitter.com/caelestee) on Twitter [drew Hinata and some Tobious!!](https://twitter.com/caelestee/status/1232406448207880198?s=20) I am still incredibly soft over them ;__________;
> 
> [@myrseyy](https://twitter.com/myrseyy) on Twitter [drew Kageyama at the end of chapter 3!!](https://twitter.com/myrseyy/status/1238986612765274113?s=20) Look at his sweet face ;_____; and the lil Hina in the corner <3
> 
> [@JainieLace](https://twitter.com/JainieLace) on Twitter [drew Hinata and Tobiou out on deliveries in the town!!](https://twitter.com/JainieLace/status/1240090987990601728?s=20) The detail still blows me away <3 <3 
> 
> Thank-you so much for these!! I am beyond touched and unspeakably grateful ;________; please have a look at the artists' other beautiful artworks!!

_“Perhaps one reason we are fascinated by cats is because such a small animal can contain so much independence, dignity, and freedom of spirit. Unlike the dog, the cat’s personality is never bet on a human’s. He demands acceptance on his own terms.” – Lloyd Alexander_

* * *

In movies, spring is always filled with sunshine and flower blossoms, the world lighting up as winter melts away.

In reality, it rains.

Hinata Shouyou grunts as he kicks at his bicycle’s kickstand for a third time until it finally levers all the way down with a protesting squeak. He really did need to oil it at some point… Quickly locking the chain into place, he shoves his rain sodden fringe away from his eyes, grabs his bag (thankfully water-proof) and is about to fumble in his pocket for his keys when a clatter catches his attention.

Just a few houses down the street is a relatively large black cat, half dangling in one of his neighbour’s bins, its hind legs wiggling feebly in the air. The bin rocks ominously under its weight until eventually it falls over with almighty crash, the cat sent sprawling with an indignant yowl.

Hinata’s mouth ticks up in a small smile as the cat continues to meow loudly at the bin, almost like it’s yelling at it, before starting to pick through its contents with one tentative, large paw.

The black cat has been a new feature to the street – often peeking in around the bins or huddling under awnings and cars in the persistent rain. Hinata’s asked a few of his immediate neighbours, but it doesn’t seem to belong to anyone they know of. Presumably, it’s a new stray.

The sky ahead gives an ominous rumble and Hinata jerks out of staring at the cat, rummaging for his keys with rain-slick fingers and jamming them into the lock.

It’s only a small house – traditional, one story. The kitchen and bathroom are both small, but there’s enough space for two bedrooms and the living area is pretty roomy. It used to belong to his grandparents, who had sadly passed away about ten years back, leaving the house in their family. Fully paid for, it was only the utilities that needed covering, making it an ideal, and _cheap_ , place to live so that Hinata could attend the nearby university.

Pulling off his cap with his food delivery company’s logo on it and sticking it on one of the hooks in the entryway to dry, Hinata shucks off his shoes and jacket, grimacing at how his socks are soaked through. Peeling them off his feet, he lobs them in the general direction of the laundry basket and heads to the bathroom, pulling off the rest of his clothing (in various states of dampness) as he goes.

Being a delivery boy for a local takeaway restaurant wasn’t the worst job in the world to have, all things considered. His boss, a friendly, cheerful family man, was kind to him, and paid him well. Plus biking around the rises and slopes of this hilly town was a good way to get in exercise.

Hinata just wished it wasn’t so weather dependent.

Fresh and warm from his shower, and his dinner warming up in the microwave (kindly provided by the chef at the restaurant - his boss’s wife – who always made too much on Mondays), Hinata plonks his laptop on the kotatsu’s tabletop in the living room and sticks his feet under the blanket.

He’s just pulled up the latest video in the series he’s been watching – a selection of recordings of Japan’s national volleyball team’s best moments during the last Olympics – when he hears shouting and _yowling_ from outside.

Confused, Hinata scrambles to his feet to peer through the living room’s windows that face out towards the street.

Across the road, at the house directly across from his, an elderly man (not exactly Hinata’s favourite neighbour, if he’s honest) is brandishing a broom at the same black cat from earlier, with the large feline swiping at the bristles and wailing something awful.

Hinata scowls as the man swipes at the cat a little too forcefully for his liking and unlatches the window, sliding it open.

 _“Oi!”_ He yells, sticking his head through into the open air.

His neighbour ignores him, or doesn’t hear him over the sound of the still falling rain, and takes another sweep at the cat. The cat tumbles over its own feet to dodge in time and Hinata heaves his upper body out of the window in indignant fury. _“Hey! Stop that!”_ He hollers.

This time the man looks up, catching his eye with a furious expression twisting his gnarled features. “Is this yours?” He shouts back, brandishing the broom at the cat. “It won’t stop begging for scraps!”

“So? That’s no reason to hit it with a _broom!_ What the hell is wrong with you?”

The man’s face darkens with increased anger and possibly some embarrassment, and he flips the broom around to wave the handle in Hinata’s direction. The cat, now temporarily safe, starts to slink to the side of the man’s house, presumably to shelter from the rain. “So it _is_ yours?” The man asks again, angry and suspicious.

 _“No,”_ Hinata replies, exasperated. “Just ignore it if you don’t want to feed it! Don’t _hit it.”_

His neighbour looks like he wants to say more, twisting his hands around his broom’s handle and scowling fiercely at Hinata, but eventually he shoots one last dirty glare at the cat sitting by his porch and spins on his heel, slamming back into his house with his broom in tow.

Blowing out a sigh in both relief and to help settle the anger still simmering in his chest, Hinata pulls himself back through the window into his house. As he pulls the window closed, he stares out at the cat, still sitting under the old man’s roof, staring forlornly out at the rain. It’s clearly hungry if it’s fishing in bins and begging grumpy old men for food scraps, and probably has nowhere to go, if the rain hasn’t sent it scampering away yet.

Hinata runs his fingers through his hair, ruffling it as he thinks. He definitely doesn’t have any cat food, and he hasn’t been shopping yet, so his own fridge and cupboards are looking a little bare, but… maybe he has something.

Unfortunately, despite his searching, his kitchen is utterly bare of any food he thinks a cat would eat – all he has is rice, some packaged snacks, one lonely banana and two eggs.

Huffing, Hinata leans on his fridge’s door and stares at the empty shelves inside with a frown, as if staring at them long enough would produce a large tuna, or something. He’s just starting to close the door when the carton of milk in the door’s shelf catches his eye.

Milk. Cats like milk, right? That’s a thing.

Grabbing the carton and an old dish from the cupboard (chipped along the edge, but he doesn’t think the cat will mind), Hinata pours out a generous helping and pads back to the front door, holding the dish carefully with both hands so it doesn’t spill.

Sliding the door open with his foot, he sticks his head out to see the cat thankfully hasn’t scarpered yet.

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty…” he coos, crouching down slowly and holding the dish out in front of him.

Across the street, the cat’s tail flicks and it stares back, impassive.

“Here kitty…” Hinata leans as far forward as he can so the rain doesn’t splash into the milk. “Look, I’ve got milk for you…”

The cat’s ears twitch and then prick up sharper at that and it rises to its feet, its tail curving up into a large question mark shape. It continues to stare at Hinata, its head cocked gently to one side, curious but not making a move towards him yet.

“I haven’t poisoned it, I promise,” Hinata smiles, and he sets the dish down in front of him. “Look, I’ll leave it here if you’re shy.”

He stands slowly and steps back, standing in the doorway, watching the cat.

The cat hovers under the awning across the street for another moment more, before it looks left, then right, and then it’s darting across the road towards him.

 _‘Like it’s checking for cars’_ Hinata thinks, amused, as the cat trots quickly over until it’s safely under his roof in front of the dish of milk.

It’s quite large, for a cat, with short, glossy black fur and big paws. And, now that it’s up close and Hinata can see clearly, its eyes aren’t the usual gold or amber colouring that cats normally have either. Instead, they’re a very clear, bright blue.

“Huh.” Hinata tilts his head in consideration as the cat sniffs at the milk and shoots one more quick look up at Hinata before starting to lap hungrily. “You’re pretty striking. Isn’t anyone looking for you?” He murmurs, lowering himself back down into another crouch as the cat makes quick work of the milk.

The cat ignores him, fully engrossed in the milk, its tail swishing lazily from side to side. Hinata watches it, thinking. He knows almost nothing about cats, but it seems to be a moggy (it doesn’t really look like a fancy breed, Hinata thinks, despite the pretty eyes) and if it’s big it’s probably a male? He has no idea though, doesn’t even know how he’d check. Maybe he’ll Google it later…

Swiping its tongue across the now empty dish to clean away any remaining droplets, the cat blinks back up at Hinata and stays crouched in front of him, watching him with big blue eyes.

It’s funny, and it’s probably the way its fur runs or how its whiskers sit, but it looks like the cat is frowning at him.

“Good?” Hinata asks with a smile, and he reaches out to stroke the cat’s head.

The cat rears back immediately, scampering upright and back a few paces, its ears folded back.

“Sorry, sorry!” Hinata apologises, holding his hand up in an appeasing gesture. That was a bit stupid. The poor thing had a broom swung at it not ten minutes ago, no wonder it’s feeling a bit skittish.

The cat’s ears straighten up again, and it looks at Hinata with the same, frowny sort of face, the tip of its tail twitching before, bizarrely, it bobs its head down low. Then it straightens and turns tail, darting back up the street and into the night.

Hinata blinks after it as he picks up the empty milk dish. Did it just _bow_ at him?

He looks up the street at the point where the cat disappeared from view for a few more minutes longer, the rain still falling, before he slides his door shut.

He still has his own dinner to eat, after all, and the highlights to watch. He has notes to make, forms to study, moves to witness… anything at all that might help him make it onto the team this year.

He only has four weeks before college starts up again.

* * *

The next morning, it’s still raining, but it’s lessened to more of a light drizzle – the kind that mists over you and gets you drenched before you realise it.

But at least it’s light enough that he can get away with a jacket and sturdier shoes than yesterday, Hinata thinks as he shoulders his bag and grabs his keys and wallet. He really needs to find out what he’s done with his rain mac…

Sliding the door open, he’s about to step through and head out to do the shopping he desperately needs to do when he nearly trips over the large, dark object right in front of his door.

“Ack!” Hinata squawks he stumbles and dances on his toes, arms wind milling as he just manages to keep his balance. “What the _hell?_ ” He says loudly, twisting around to look at whatever he almost fell flat on his face for –

It’s the cat.

That same, frowny face stares impassively back at him - the cat is just sitting on the path leading up to Hinata’s front door, its tail thumping the ground.

“Oh, it’s you,” Hinata sighs, rubbing a hand over his face.

The cat’s tail thumps a couple more times before it meows, loudly.

“You want food huh?” Hinata guesses, scratching at his temple.

Bizarrely, the cat’s face seems to furrow even more and it meows again, quieter this time.

“Well, I’m actually on my way out to get some, but you can have the rest of the milk?” Hinata suggests, before he blanches. It’s a _cat_ , why is he asking it a question?

The cat meows again, pawing at the ground. Its big blue eyes look almost sheepish in its frowny, furry face.

Then it bobs its head.

Hinata stares.

Did it just _nod?_

Brown eyes hold blue for a long, silent minute before Hinata shakes himself. No. Cats can’t nod. But nevertheless, it’s still here and it’s probably still hungry so even though milk isn’t really _food_ it might as well have the rest of it. In a daze, he steps back into the house and fetches the milk and the chipped dish, and a few minutes later, the cat is happily lapping up the milk with big greedy gulps.

“I’ll… see you later, I guess,” Hinata says, still a little baffled, as he swings his leg over his bike. He’d best get some cat food while he’s out, he supposes, if the cat is going to become a frequent visitor.

As he pushes off and speeds off down the hill, he glances over his shoulder to see the cat still sitting in front of his house, watching him cycle away.

When he returns, his bike heavy with shopping bags, the cat is gone.

Hinata spends the rest of his day in and out of the house – making deliveries for work, heading to the gym, the library. He keeps an eye out for the strange black cat the whole time, but it doesn’t show until much later in the evening, when he’s taking the rubbish out.

_Mrrrow._

Hinata almost drops his rubbish bin’s lid on his foot at the sudden, insistent, _loud_ meow that echoes in the darkness.

“ _Oh my god_ ,” he breathes out, lowering the lid, slowly, back down onto the bin and turning to find the frowny black cat sitting right next to him, looking up at him expectantly. “Can’t you _warn_ a guy before you do that?”

The cat almost looks affronted. _‘I just did’_ , its face seems to say, and its ears flick back and forth.

“Right, well, if you’re here for dinner I actually have food for you this time, so aren’t you in luck,” Hinata says as he heads back to the house.

The cat follows him, tail looped back up in a question mark, but it stops at the doorway, sitting back down on its haunches as Hinata opens the door.

“Okay, well, err… just wait there, I guess?” Hinata says, very aware he’s once again trying to hold a normal conversation with a stray cat. The cat just blinks balefully at him.

Hinata returns with two dishes this time – one with wet food and the other with dry kibble. He had no idea what the cat would prefer so he’d just bought both. Lowering both dishes down in front of the cat, he smiles as it sniffs at both offerings. “That’s better right? Actual food! I didn’t know what you’d like, but they’re both fish.”

But instead of immediately chowing down, the cat makes a displeased, growly _mrrrr_ in its throat, sitting back and staring up at Hinata, blue eyes narrowed.

“What?” Hinata asks, frowning back at it, “you can’t have milk all the time, you’ll get sick. Probably.”

The cat swishes its tail.

“Just try it,” Hinata insists, nudging the dishes closer towards the cat.

The cat raises one large paw, and pushes them back towards him, one at a time.

Hinata stares at it silence, stunned.

“ _Mrrrrrrow_ ,” the cat warbles.

“You are the weirdest cat I’ve ever met,” Hinata says, unsure whether to feel more shocked the cat literally _shunned_ his dinner offering or be weirdly insulted. “Well, fine. I didn’t buy any more milk so if you don’t want this you’ll have to go hungry,” he says, trying for firm.

The cat stares at him with wide eyes before it lowers its head, and, very, _very_ slowly, takes a tentative lick of the wet food.

It rears back immediately, shaking its head violently and making a hissy, grumpy sort of noise deep in its throat.

“Okay, fine, it’s gross, I get it,” Hinata huffs, annoyed but defeated. It was kind of the cheap side, anyway. “Alright, hang on.”

The cat makes a chirpy, hopeful noise and stands back up, dancing a little on its feet.

Hinata shakes his head vaguely as he scoops up the dishes with the unwanted food and disappears back into his house. He returns with one singular dish with some left over tuna from his lunch – not much, only a few pinches, but he supposes it’s a reasonable amount for a cat.

“It’s not milk,” he says to the cat, who’s looking at the dish he’s holding with big, greedy blue eyes. The cat seems to wilt. “But I think you’ll probably like this better.”

The dish has no sooner brushed the ground and the cat is attacking it immediately, scorfing down the fish in large bites.

Hinata can’t help the wide smile that spreads over his face as the cat finishes its meal lightning fast. The feline really is sort of endearing, in a bizarre, demanding sort of way.

When the cat finishes, licking the dish spotlessly clean, it looks back up at Hinata, small pink tongue poking out constantly as it licks its lips.

“Good?” Hinata asks with a grin. Feeling bold, he holds his hand out towards the cat, the backs of his fingers curled to face it.

The cat stares at him for a long moment, before it leans forward and bumps its forehead against Hinata’s fingers, hard, before turning tail and dashing back up the street again, quick as lightning.

“See you tomorrow!” Hinata calls after it, amused.

* * *

When the morning comes though, Hinata does not see the cat by his doorstep.

It’s no real surprise – considering the heavens have opened and rain is currently sluicing down in heavy sheets, water running down the street’s cobbles in streams. It’s so heavy even standing underneath the awnings of the houses doesn’t provide much shelter.

Hinata’s not surprised, but he is a little worried. Hopefully the cat found somewhere warm and dry to wait the rain out.

There are no deliveries for him to make today (there’s no way he’d manage to deliver them dry anyway), and after an aborted attempt to go the gym (too rainy to ride a bike and too slippery to walk down the hill) Hinata regretfully signs himself up for a lazy day.

He’s still got volleyball videos to watch, and notes to make, so at least he has something to keep him occupied even if thought of staying still all day leaves him feeling antsy.

The day passes slowly, and the rain does not let up, lashing against the windows and hammering on the roof tiles. A few times Hinata pokes his head out of the front door to look for the cat, but he can barely see out into the street the rain is falling so hard, let alone spot a black cat.

It’s late afternoon and the sun is just starting to sink in the sky when there’s a muffled, rhythmic thumping at his front door.

“Coming!” Hinata calls from where he’s curled up on the sofa, his laptop balanced on his knees. Weird – most people would ring the doorbell, and he’s not expecting any visitors. One of the neighbours maybe?

As he rounds the corner and into the hallway, he thinks he can hear muffled, feline wailing through the wood. Speeding up, he shoves open the door to find the cat, right in his doorway, its black fur spiked up and shiny with water and large blue eyes staring pleadingly up at him.

“There you are,” Hinata sighs, relieved. He wasn’t overly frantic – cats aren’t stupid and know where to take shelter, but the downpour is falling so hard, and he’d been thinking about his feline friend all day.

The cat dithers in the doorway, pressed as close as it can get without actually stepping through into the entryway. Its face is a strange mixture of its usual frown and somewhat distressed.

“What are you standing there for?” Hinata asks fondly. “Aren’t you coming in?” He shuffles more to the side to make the gap between himself and the door more obvious.

Blue eyes blink once at him before the cat is darting past his legs and into the house in a dark blur of wet fur.

Sliding the door closed, Hinata pads after the cat, who has made it to the end of the hallway and is now dawdling, seemingly unsure of where to go.

“Go in there,” Hinata says, pointing into the living room, “I’m going to make food.”

The cat’s ears perk at the word ‘food’ as it peers round the corner into the living room. It spots the kotatsu and makes an excited, chirrupy noise and scuttles over, tail high with a pointed tip. Hinata watches, struggling to hold back his giggles, as the cat noses under the blanket and immediately wriggles underneath until just the tip of its tail is visible, swishing back and forth.

“You’ve definitely been in a house before,” Hinata muses, “if you know what one those is.”

Hinata wonders, not for the first time, if the cat has an owner, or at least used to. It’s a little skittish, and not overly friendly, but it seems too comfortable around him to be truly feral.

 _‘Maybe I should put up posters’_ , Hinata thinks as he heads into the kitchen to get started on dinner, _‘see if anyone is missing you.’_

The cat doesn’t move from its safe haven under the kotatsu while Hinata cooks, and when he returns to the living room with his meal in one hand and a small plate of chicken for the cat in the other, the end of a black tail is still poking out from the under the blanket.

“ _Oi_ , Sleepy,” Hinata says, poking the blanket with his foot until his toes bump against a squishy lump that immediately starts squirming. “Dinnertime.”

There’s another chirrup, rustling, and then the tail disappears, replaced by a round black furry face with big blue eyes that are almost shining.

“You definitely understand Japanese,” Hinata says, still slightly perturbed by how well this cat responds to what he says.

The cat crawls from under the kotatsu, its fur now soft and dry, the last of rain no longer clinging to it, and it hops up onto the sofa next to Hinata as he sits down.

“Here,” Hinata says, placing the plate of chicken in front of it, snorting when the cat starts gorging itself as usual. “Greedy, aren’t you?”

The cat takes no notice of him, and Hinata grabs the remote to switch on the tv, settling for some nature documentary to sit back and relax to. Seems an apt thing to watch anyway, considering his current companion. Hinata digs into his own meal, and for a while the only sounds are their munching, the soft words from the documentary narrator, and the slashing of rain against the window panes.

As expected, the cat finishes its meal first, swiping his tongue across the plate until it's shining clean before sitting back and licking its lips, staring at Hinata hopefully.

“You’ve had yours, this is mine,” Hinata says, voice muffled around the rice in his cheeks, focusing on the television so he doesn’t have to look at the cat’s big, hopeful eyes.

The cat’s expression settles back into its usual grumpy sort of look and it eases down on the cushions, turning its gaze to the windows, occasionally stealing glances at Hinata’s bowl.

On the television, the narrator starts to talk about ocean fauna as the footage shows flying fish leaping out of the water and skimming across the surface.

Next to Hinata, the cat glances at the television, as though something caught its attention, before looking away again. A fish darts along the screen and the cat swivels its head to look _again_ , ears twitching, before once more it looks away, looking disgruntled.

Hinata watches it, curious, before swallowing his rice and trying something out.

“Tobiou,” he says, clearly, and watches with amusement as the cat’s ears perk and it looks at him sharply, blue eyes wide.

“Wow, you really react to that, huh?” Hinata muses, shovelling the last of his dinner into his mouth and plonking the empty bowl on the tabletop. The cat watches him with something like disdain on its furry features. “Well, you need a name, and I can’t keep thinking of you as Greedy Cat.”

The cat meows indignantly.

“So is Tobiou is okay?” Hinata goes on, and the cat’s tail thumps against the cushions. It looks startled again. “I think it’s a type of fish. You like fish.”

Two big blue eyes blink before the cat – Tobiou – makes a long rumbly noise (not a purr, something rougher) in its throat before, once again, it seems to bob its head at Hinata.

“Tobiou it is then!” Hinata says cheerfully, a little too loud to cover up his staccato heart at the _nodding cat_. “And err, I’m gonna call you a boy from now on, is that okay?”

Tobiou looks at him witheringly before flopping onto his side on the sofa cushions, squirming, like he’s embarrassed. Hinata tries to reach over to run his fingers across the fur along his side but the cat spots him just in time and it rolls out of the way.

And straight onto the floor.

“Meant to do that, did you?” Hinata calls after him as Tobiou springs back onto his feet and scuttles out of the door.

The rain doesn’t let up all night. Tobiou doesn’t make any move towards the front door, and Hinata doesn’t encourage him to leave.

The cat had slunk back into the living room shortly after his embarrassed exit and clambered back onto the sofa to sit next to Hinata. He dodges any attempts Hinata makes to pet him, but otherwise seems content to curl up next to him. When Hinata eventually rises for bed, two big blue eyes watch him closely, but he doesn’t move from the sofa – just flicks an ear when Hinata yawns his goodnight.

* * *

Morning dawns bright and thankfully rain-free and, after refusing yet another serving of cat food and helping himself to some of Hinata’s breakfast kipper, Tobiou is off and out the door as soon as Hinata opens it.

Hinata wants to feel a bit offended at this abrupt departure, but, in fairness, Tobiou is probably used to being outdoors. And it only just occurs to him, as he mounts his bike and heads for the library, that he didn’t provide anywhere for the poor thing to go to the toilet.

Chaining his bike to the library’s bicycle stand, Hinata fishes out his phone from his pocket as he heads through the building’s sliding doors and checks his messages.

Last night, after dinner, he’d texted Yachi, a good friend from high school, about what he should put on a found cat poster. As much as he was fond of his new feline friend, he felt awful thinking about how there might be a family out there looking for him, and he thought he should at least make the effort to try and find them, if they existed. Tobiou may not be making any obvious attempt to return home, but what if he had just wandered too far and was lost? Cats went missing all the time, right?

But he is hopeless at this sort of thing and, luckily, Yachi is a design student and very much _not_ useless. He still has some of her posters for the high school volleyball team pinned up in his bedroom.

Plonking himself down in front of the library’s computers, he busies himself following Yachi’s detailed, yet easy-to-follow instructions (how she manages that, Hinata will never know) and putting together a simple poster with his contact details, a photo – snapped on his phone when Tobiou was distracted – and a basic description. Satisfied, he prints it and takes a photo of it to show Yachi as he waits for the rest of the copies to spit out into the printer tray.

Yachi texts back her enthusiastic praises, and reminds him that, if he can, he should probably try and take Tobiou to the local vet as well, in case he has a microchip.

 _‘How am I gonna do that?’_ Hinata wonders, as he places his bundle of posters carefully inside his bag and remounts his bike. He doesn’t have a pet carrier, and there’s no way he’d be able to pick Tobiou up for longer than like, a second, yet alone carry him all the way to the vets.

He checks his phone with a frown – he still has an hour before he’s due to start his deliveries for the lunchtime rush, so he could visit the pet store. See how much a carrier would cost.

Turns out, they cost a lot. Hinata had blanched at the price – way more than he currently had his wallet – and reluctantly decided to leave it for now, opting to pick up the necessities for a litter tray instead. As he queues to pay, he can’t help himself grabbing a small, perfectly round, soft bird toy from a plastic bucket in the line. It’s jet black with tiny wings and it reminds Hinata of a little crow and nostalgia.

He has just enough time to drop off his posters and purchases at home and grab his company cap before he’s swept up in deliveries. He’s on lunch _and_ dinner duty today, and thankfully the rain holds off, the hours slipping by as Hinata speeds from the restaurant to house to house.

The sun has long since set by the time he’s cycling home, tired from the hours of biking up and down hills, but with a pocket full of decent wages and a fresh dinner in his delivery bag.

As expected, Tobiou is waiting by his door, sitting upright with his tail curled over his large front paws. _‘You’re late,’_ his grumpy face seems to say.

“Some of us have work,” Hinata tells him, as he fetches the bag of food from his bag and unlocks the door. Tobiou wastes no time squeezing through the gap as soon as Hinata has the door sliding open.

“Can cats have squid?” Hinata wonders once he’s inside and warming up his dinner in the microwave. Tobiou blinks at him from his spot on the kitchen counter. “Can you have squid?” He repeats, to the cat this time.

“ _Meowww_ ,” Tobiou says.

“Eh, I’m sure it’s fine.”

He tosses a few squid servings onto a plate for Tobiou and carries his own meal to the living room. The cat makes quick work of his dinner, as usual, and trots into the room after him.

“Here,” Hinata says once he’s settled on the sofa. He rummages in his pocket and fishes out the small crow toy he’d bought earlier. He tosses it towards Tobiou, who watches it arc through the air with an air of mild disinterest. “I bought you something.”

Tobiou looks at the toy on the floor before slowly raising his eyes to look at Hinata with disdain.

“You’re supposed to play with it,” Hinata says helpfully.

Tobiou makes a loud sniffing noise (as loud as a cat’s nose can make, anyway) and steps deliberately over the toy, joining Hinata on the sofa.

When Hinata is taking his plate back to the kitchen, he bends down to scoop up the bird toy and waggles it in Tobiou’s direction, who has leapt back down and is nosing around the kotatsu blanket. “Come on, don’t you want it?”

Blue eyes narrow at him.

“Come _on!_ Look you just have to… bat it, or something. It’s _fun_ , it’s a toy, look.” Hinata tosses the little bird once again, up high into the air, giving Tobiou plenty of time to watch its rise and descent. It lands in the space between them and Tobiou stares at it, unimpressed.

Undeterred, Hinata scoops it back up and tosses it one more time.

Once again, Tobiou watches it arc up into the air, but this time, as it starts to fall, he raises himself on his haunches and lifts his paws up. With his paw pads skyward, he catches the bird as it falls, bending his forelegs just a little before sending the toy shooting off in another direction, where it lands and rolls along the floor a few feet away.

“Yay!” Hinata cheers, and Tobiou gives him a withering look before he starts pawing at the floor, almost looking sheepish.

“That was good! You were like a little furry setter,” Hinata enthuses, making a small imitation of an overhand volleyball toss before heading over to where the toy landed to pick it up. When he turns, ready to throw the toy again, he finds Tobiou staring at him in what looks like alarm – big dinner plate pupils in wide blue eyes. “Tobiou?” He asks, concerned.

The cat’s tail flicks wildly from side to side, and then his eyes narrow, his head tilting gently as the shocked look melts into one of contemplation instead.

“You okay?” Hinata asks again, resting his hands on his hips as he frowns at the cat.

Tobiou just blinks once, long and slow, before stretching in an exaggerated manner and slinking off to slide under the kotatsu blanket.

* * *

Hinata chooses the weekend to spring his plan.

He’s found a veterinary surgery that’s open all day.

He’s managed to keep the pet carrier he borrowed from a neighbour hidden until now.

Now all he needs to do is get Tobiou into it with a minimal amount of fuss and lug him to the vets without him tumbling from his bike.

First, he puts down Tobiou’s breakfast in the kitchen like usual, except this time he gives him a lot more – because Tobiou is greedy and eats _very_ quickly, and Hinata needs time. Thankfully, the cat starts to chow down without any fuss or suspicion over his much larger than usual portion, and Hinata tiptoes to the kitchen door to slide it shut.

He opens the cupboard he’d stashed the carrier in and pulls it out, being extra careful to not make any more noise than is necessary. Once it’s out he’ll put it as close to Tobiou as possible so all he as to do is pick up the cat and-

Tobiou is staring at him.

Tuna flakes are clinging to the cat’s cheeks and chin as he looks up from his meal with dinner-plate eyes and pricked ears.

“Hey buddy…” Hinata chuckles nervously, setting the carrier gently on the ground. “We just gotta make a quick trip to the vets, that’s all…”

Tobiou blinks at him, once, before turning tail and bolting for the door. He slams against the wood with a defiant yowl and starts pawing at it manically, nails scraping across the surface.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Hinata calls, shuffling his socked feet across the floor slowly towards Tobiou, hands out in a placating manner. “It’s okay! Nothing bad is gonna happen! We’re just checking if you have a microchip, okay?”

He reaches out tentatively towards the cat and only just manages to snatch his hand back in time as Tobiou swipes out with one huge paw. _“Oi!”_

Tobiou stops scratching at the door and hunches low to the ground, flattening his ears, blue eyes narrowed. Slowly, the fur along his neck and the ridge of his spine starts to fluff up.

“It’s _okay_ , Tobiou…” Hinata says softly, lowering himself to his knees. “I promise it’s nothing bad, okay?”

He tries to reach out again, but Tobiou thumps the floor in front of him in warning and a deep, low growl starts pouring from his throat.

Hinata blows out a sigh and runs and hand through his hair, watching his little friend sadly. He really doesn’t want to terrify Tobiou anymore but this really is something he has to do – he’s had no answer from social media posts or the posters he’s put up, and this is the only thing left on the list.

Getting to his feet, Hinata pads over to the carrier and opens the door to fetch the blanket he’d put inside. It was to make it comfier for Tobiou but now he’s going to use it to swaddle him. No way is he going near those claws unprotected.

Tobiou watches him unfold the blanket and starts growling anew, blue eyes darting around the room, looking for any potential points of escape. They land upon the kitchen window - which is ajar, but far from open. The cat sprints across the floor towards it, leaping onto the counter in one powerful leap.

“Oh no you don’t!”

Hinata pounces after him before the cat can try and force himself through the gap, flinging the blanket over his large, furry body. Tobiou starts wriggling madly immediately, infuriated wailing echoing, muffled, underneath the fabric. “Just! Hold _still!_ ” Hinata hisses, trying to hold the blanket around the flailing limbs. Using the full length of his arms, he just about manages to scoop Tobiou up in the blanket and staggers over to where the carrier is.

Unfortunately, just as he reaches it, Tobiou manages to force one paw out from his blanket prison and starts swiping madly. His claws rake across Hinata’s arm and he hisses sharply. His grip slips just enough that Tobiou can poke his head out, his fur ruffled and his eyes wild with rage. With an incensed growl, the cat strikes like a viper, successfully sinking two of his canines into the meaty part of Hinata’s left hand between his index finger and thumb.

Hinata drops the cat-blanket-bundle immediately, cursing loudly as he cradles his hand against his chest. Tobiou lands on the floor in a heap, scrabbling free of the blanket and shooting off to the other end of the kitchen, where he hunches and watches Hinata with round eyes.

“Ow, ow, ow, _fuck_ ,” Hinata hisses, waving his hand in the air just in front of his chest to try and soothe the fierce burn spreading through it. He opens his watering eyes from where they were pressed shut to examine his hand – bleeding, unsurprisingly. A thin steady stream of red from both sides of his hand, running over his skin and down over his wrist, dripping onto the floor.

He stumbles over to the sink and flicks on the tap with his other hand, sticking the injured one under the spray, another sharp shout punching out of him as the pain flares up even fiercer under the flow of the water. “Dammit…” he whimpers, biting his lip and turning his hand this way and that, making sure the stream runs over his hand thoroughly, whisking the blood away down the drain.

There’s a thump next to him, and he turns his head slightly to see Tobiou has jumped up on the counter next to him, blue eyes fixated on his hand under the water spray.

“You’ve got sharp teeth,” Hinata grunts, trying to steady his breathing as the cold water finally helps to soothe his burning hand.

Tobiou makes a small, mournful sounding noise, and reaches out with one large paw. Hinata watches him warily, not moving, in case the cat tries to swipe at him. Blue eyes flick up to look at him before the big paw pats him gently on his left forearm, just above where the water is sluicing over his skin.

“I guess, to be fair, I did kind of spring it on you,” Hinata admits, flexing his fingers. The bleeding seems to have mostly stopped now, just a very thin trickle mixing with the water. Tobiou’s paw pats him again. “And I did bundle you in a blanket.” Another pat. “But did you really have to _bite_ me?” He grouses, though he supposes he isn’t really _mad_ , especially now, with how Tobiou seems to be stroking his arm with his big, soft paw.

Tobiou makes the little sad noise again, and his ears seem to droop a little.

“I swear, we’re just going to go and see if you have a microchip. Nothing else. You’re not sick or injured, what else are they gonna do, anyway?” Hinata says, reaching over for the liquid soap bottle to pump a few globs onto his injured hand, hissing as he rubs it over the bite wounds. Tentatively, he flexes the fingers on his bad hand and is relieved when they all bend without any issues. The bites hurt, but he doesn’t think Tobiou’s actually done any lasting damage.

Hand clean and the bleeding mostly stopped, Hinata switches off the tap and dries his hand gingerly with paper towels before padding off to the bathroom for the first aid kit. He settles for sticking two large plasters on each bite – he doesn’t have the dexterity or skill to bandage one-handed.

When he returns, he’s surprised to see Tobiou sitting in front of the carrier, blue eyes narrowed at it.

“Tobiou?”

The cat flicks his ears at his name and he gives Hinata a brief look before slinking into the carrier and crouching inside.

“Oh, _now_ you go in. Of course,” Hinata mutters.

Tobiou meows loudly from inside.

“Alright, alright,” Hinata sighs, heading over and kneeling down, peering inside. Pissed off blue eyes peer back. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I tried to stuff you in a box. But you did bite me so we’re even, okay?” Pissed off blue eyes blink once. “So let’s put that behind us and go and see the vet. There will be no needles, I promise, and we’ll come straight back home and you’ll get a huge bowl of milk, okay?”

Another long, slow blink, and Tobiou seems to settle a little easier in the carrier, and makes no move to make a break for it when Hinata slides the door closed and locks it in place.

It’s a little difficult holding the box with only one hand (his bad one throbbed something fierce when he tried to use it and Tobiou was _very_ heavy) but he manages to haul it to his bike with a minimal amount of crashing it against the walls of his house. Thankfully, it manages to fit on the rack he normally puts his food delivery bag on and he straps it in place, Tobiou watching him all the while through the gaps in the plastic.

Hinata thanks his younger self for practicing bicycle tricks so much to impress his friends, as he’s able to ride to the vets with only one hand on the handlebars, the bad one tucked safely in his lap. There’s a few muffled noises from the carrier whenever Hinata takes a corner too fast or rides over a bump in the road, but otherwise the trip is uneventful.

The veterinary practice is small, but busy, and Hinata busies himself with his phone as he waits for Tobiou’s name to be called. The cat himself is oddly quiet, the only noises from inside the carrier are from his constant restless circling. In an attempt to appease him, Hinata wanders over to the display of food and toys in the corner of the waiting area, and selects a milky cat treat. The quickest way to improve Tobiou’s mood is to feed him, after all.

He slots the treat through the gaps in the plastic and then rolls his eyes when Tobiou shoves it straight back out again.

“Suit yourself,” he sighs, before perking up when a lady in scrubs calls for them from a consultation room doorway. “Oh! Here we go.”

Tobiou had been extremely reticent to leave the safety of his carrier when Hinata lugged it through, and it was only when Hinata hefted the carrier up to show him the full expanse of the room, fully clear of needles, that he slinked out warily.

“No chip, I’m afraid,” the vet had said apologetically after finishing waving a scanner across Tobiou’s back and sides. Tobiou himself stood stock-still on the examination table, like he was hoping if he remained as statuesque as possible, nothing would happen.

“Ah,” Hinata clucks his tongue, both disappointment and relief warring inside of him.

“In this case, I would say if no-one comes forward to your advertisements in a week, you can keep him, if you want,” the vet goes on to say. “Or we could put you in touch with a rescue centre, if you prefer?”

Tobiou jolts from his frozen position to stare up at Hinata in alarm.

“No, no! That’s okay, he can stay with me,” Hinata says, and reaches out with his good hand to run it reassuringly over Tobiou’s back – who lets him, for a change.

The vet nods and then slides him a price list of things Tobiou would need if Hinata decided to adopt him fully – including neutering. Hinata’s eyebrows quirk at that one and he slides a smirk over at his furry friend, who squints suspicious blue eyes at him.

Tobiou is remarkably well behaved when the vet quickly listens to his heart and obligingly opens his mouth for her to check his teeth but once she glances under his tail, he leaps down from the table and scampers into the carrier as fast as his big paws will carry him.

“Male,” the vet confirms as Hinata snickers and locks the carrier door. He thanks her for her time and grunts as he hefts Tobiou up, only smacking the side of the carrier against the wall once as he staggers out of the building.

“See, no needles!” Hinata cheers, slightly out of breath as he dumps the carrier on his bike’s rack. Inside, Tobiou’s back is to the door, effectively ignoring him, though his ears flatten. “Now you get milk,” Hinata says in a low, conspiring voice and he laughs brightly as the cat’s ears perk back up again immediately. Swinging a leg over his bike, he mounts it and heads for home.

Sitting on his bed later that evening in his pyjamas, Hinata looks up from where he’s changing the plasters on his hand to see Tobiou standing in the doorway, blue eyes luminous even in the low lighting.

“Hey you,” Hinata says, smiling at the cat before turning his attention back to his hand. It’s not swollen, thankfully, just a little inflamed around the bite edges. Hopefully, if he keeps it clean, it should heal up fine.

“You know... I was supposed to go and play volleyball soon with some friends soon, once everyone’s in town again,” he says into the quiet room, running a fingertip across the plasters on his bad hand. “I couldn’t practice this week because of the rain and some of them being away, and I know it’s only been a few days, but I feel like I'm behind already…”

A soft pattering of paws, and Tobio is sitting in front of him, watching him with unblinking eyes.

For the most part, Hinata doesn’t really mind living alone. He gets to do what he wants, when he wants, and the freedom is great, but it _is_ lonely. His neighbours are nice (apart from the gentleman directly across the street) but much older than him, and his college friends are scattered around for the break between school years.

(Not that he’ll see them as often this year anyway, seeing as he failed his first year in spectacular fashion. His lacklustre studying habits that just about carried him through high school just weren’t enough to get him through college it seems.)

It was only a year ago, but his time at high school was filled with _so many_ people and volleyball from dawn until dusk and Hinata misses it so much sometimes he aches.

Maybe that’s why he keeps talking to this cat who is so oddly attentive and seems to understand everything he says.

“At least it’s not my spiking hand,” Hinata says, trying to keep his tone light when he notices the cat staring at it. It’s frustrating, and he wants to be more annoyed than he is, that he has to miss what little practice he can manage to scrounge together because his hand hurts, but he can’t bring himself to be mad at Tobiou.

“Hey,” he says softly, catching the cat’s attention, “we’ve got one week right? To see if anyone comes forward for you, then we can find you a home right?”

Tobiou stares up at him, his furry face oddly blank, for a cat that’s normally weirdly expressive.

“Do you want to stay here? For that week?” Hinata asks.

Tobiou’s eyes blink quickly and he looks somewhat startled, before he gets to his feet and bumps his large forehead – hard – against Hinata’s knee and then trots off quickly, his tail held high in the air with a pointy tip.

“I’ll take that as a yes then?” Hinata calls after him, grinning wide.

So he’s lonely sometimes. He failed his first year of college because he was too caught up trying to get onto the school’s volleyball team to study properly. His practice is slow and his hand hurts but it’s okay.

He’s still going to go to the gym and play with the local club. He’s changing his major to something easier to deal with, as per Yachi’s advice. He’s going to study volleyball videos and practice and practice and _practice_ until he _makes_ that team.

He’s made a friend. Even if he is a weird, greedy, grumpy cat.

And it feels like a the smallest peek of sunshine, from just behind the rainclouds.


	2. Chapter Two

_“Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.” – Joseph Wood Krutch_

* * *

“You can scowl at me all you want, I’m not budging.”

Tobiou glares up at him.

Hinata glares back.

Between them is Tobiou’s usual food dish, but instead of chicken or fish scraps, there’s cat food back on it. Hinata had relented that the cheap stuff was never going to be eaten because Tobiou was apparently a _fussy_ stray and had dumped it in the local animal charity’s donation bin before buying the highest quality food he could find at the store. He didn’t really mind feeding Tobiou scraps, but he also knew it wasn’t the healthiest option (he had done a _lot_ of Googling) and so here they are.

Tobiou turns his furious gaze down at the dish before him, looking as disgusted as it’s possible for a cat to be before raising one large paw and bashing the side of the dish, rocking it forcefully enough that his rejected dinner splatters all over the floor.

Hinata raises both hands in disbelief before storming out of the kitchen, “you’ll have to eat it off the floor then!” He calls back as he storms out and heads into the living room, ignoring Tobiou’s indignant meow echoing after him.

The following morning, the food is still on the floor, dried and crusty, and Tobiou is sitting in front of the fridge, staring at the handle with focused intensity.

“Staring at it isn’t going to make what you want appear, you know,” Hinata yawns as he steps around the cat to get started on his own breakfast. Tobiou’s tail swishes violently from side to side, his gaze unmoving.

Hinata rolls his eyes but ignores him. He doesn’t need anything from the fridge for his own breakfast and he has no intentions of opening it. Scooping the dried cat food off the floor and throwing it in the bin, he makes a point of replacing it with fresh food and placing it next to Tobiou (who ignores it) and sets about finishing his own meal.

“Don’t you dare,” Hinata warns as he starts to carry his breakfast through to the living room, pointing at Tobiou sharply as the cat starts to push the dish around the floor with one big, defiant paw.

Tobiou flops onto his side and yowls pitifully and Hinata has to summon all his willpower to ignore it and walk into the other room. If Tobiou is hungry (and he must be, because he refused to eat his dinner last night) then he will eat it.

Unfortunately, it seems Tobiou’s tastebuds are made of stronger stuff than his stomach and when Hinata returns to the kitchen with his empty plate, he finds Tobiou still lying on his side, staring mournfully at his still very full food dish.

“Good grief,” Hinata sighs, dumping his plate in the sink. He can feel his willpower crumbling away as Tobiou turns big sad blue eyes up at him. “Okay, okay, _fine_. Jesus.”

Tobiou immediately rolls onto his feet and perks up hopefully as Hinata stomps over the fridge and opens it, rifling inside for some tuna. Hinata makes a big show of scooping up the neglected food dish and scraping a little of the cat food away, replacing it with a small amount of fish. “Half and half, _there_ , happy?” He says, plonking the dish back down.

The sound of a cat stuffing his face fills the air as Tobiou attacks the tuna instantly, nosing around the cat food, and Hinata huffs out a fond sigh before gathering his things for the day. His left hand still smarts where Tobiou had bitten him a few days ago, but the bites are healing nicely and, thankfully, although it’s meant his volleyball practice has been put on pause, he can still make deliveries.

“I’m going!” He calls out as his slips on his shoes. A chirrup echoes down the hallway and then Tobiou is scuttling into view, waiting by the front door for Hinata to open it.

This has become routine the past few days – Hinata doesn’t have a cat flap and no way of installing one on his own in the old fashioned doors of his house, so he has to manually let Tobiou in and out. The cat seems pretty content to sleep inside overnight, but wants to leave every morning when Hinata does, though he normally returns by nightfall.

“See you later!” Hinata calls as he speeds off down the hill and Tobiou’s tail disappears between two houses.

Over the next couple of days Tobiou seems to eventually accept that his meals will no longer consist of purely the fish he wants, and he starts to eat the absolute bare minimum amount of cat food possible.

“Spoilt brat,” Hinata tells him fondly one evening while feeding him, earning himself an unimpressed blue eye peeking up at him, before he pads to the sofa to watch to watch the volleyball game he recorded earlier on tv. It’s one of the last matches of the new division 1 season, and he’s been itching to watch it all day.

Flopping onto the sofa, he blinks with surprise as Tobiou trots into the room almost straight away and jumps onto the cushions next to him. The large cat eats fast, but not normally _this_ quickly, and Hinata quirks a confused eyebrow as Tobiou sits straight to attention, blue eyes focused raptly on the television screen.

“I think you’re more excited to watch this than me,” Hinata mutters as the game starts up and the cat beside him shuffles so close to end of the sofa cushion he almost falls off.

And Tobiou does seem to be absolutely enamoured with what’s going on on-screen – blue eyes fixed on the ball as it flies from player to player. His rear even does a little wiggle when the sets go up. Hinata flicks his gaze to watch him every now and then, grinning with endearment.

There’s one particularly long rally that causes Hinata to lean forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he stares at the screen with wide eyes. It’s games like these – the really, _really_ , good ones that get him pumped up about this sport all over again. Sometimes, it’s like he’s twelve years old once more and catching the sight of a spiker for the first time on an electronics store tv screen. It makes his heart yearn to be on a court even more.

The rally ends and Hinata lets out a little excited whoop as he settles back against the cushions, a wistful smile spreading over his face.

“You know…” he starts as a time-out plays on the screen, “I still want this.”

Next to him, Tobiou wrenches his gaze from the television to look at him with curious blue eyes.

Hinata picks idly at a loose thread peeking out from one of the sofa cushions. “I played volleyball in high school,” he says, and he doesn’t even know _why_ he’s saying it – only that he feels an incredible urge to just get this off his chest. And Tobiou is remarkably attentive for a cat, and maybe Hinata really is just lonely, but the feline always seems to respond to what he’s saying.

“I wasn’t very good… for a long time,” Hinata admits, “I never had a real team before high school so I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just wanted to spike.” He runs his fingers across his left palm absentmindedly, brushing over the plaster that’s still there. “And I was short, and inexperienced, so even then I didn’t get to play much. Only a few games in my first and third year, when they needed a substitute.”

He pauses, curling his hands into fists. Beside him, Tobiou shuffles a little closer, still watching him.

“I came here because this was the only university that had a pretty good volleyball team that I could actually get into… and I still failed my first year. _And_ I didn’t make the team.” Hinata raises his eyes from the floor to look back up at the television screen, where one of the team’s star player is starting a jump serve. “So this year is my last shot. A lot of people have tried to talk me out of it, but…”

On the screen, the serve flies wide and is picked up the other team’s libero.

“I still want it,” Hinata says fiercely, eyes following the ball as it makes its way to the setter, then the spiker. “I still want to fly.”

The ball hits the spiker’s hand and powers past the blockers to the court below. A perfect kill.

Hinata cheers his appreciation for it, and then a soft, large paw rests gently on his knee. He looks down with a confused blink to find Tobiou staring up at him, blue eyes large and intense. The cat looks almost like he’s scrutinising him.

“I’m gonna make the team, Tobiou,” Hinata declares, grinning, “This year is definitely the year I get to play.”

One large black ear flicks once and Hinata could almost swear the cat tilted his head at him before Tobiou shuffles backwards to settle back down onto the sofa cushions, tucking his paws underneath him and turning to watch the television screen.

* * *

“See you later!” Hinata calls to Tobiou the next morning as he mounts his bike.

It’s Saturday, and not only does he have a day off from deliveries, but it’s also the day that the local neighbourhood volleyball team meets up to play at the gym - after a week off with two of the members on holiday last week. Hinata had been waiting patiently, not using his left hand more than necessary, and to his immense relief the bite wounds have mostly healed over, meaning he’s free to play properly. Not going to the gym as often he normally did had been a killer, but he’d weathered it. Today, he was going to play volleyball until his lungs burst and his muscles screamed and the other adults on the team forcibly told him to go home.

He’s just reaching the crest of the hill that his street lies on, ready to speed down the steep incline before him, when a dark shape catches his eye. But it falls behind, out of his field of vision, and before he can identify it his bike tilts over the edge and he starts whizzing down the hill. He shoots a quick glance over his shoulder, gripping his handlebars tightly, and he thinks he sees a small black shape bounding along after him but then it blinks out of view.

Hinata frowns to himself as he peddles. It sort of looked like Tobiou, but he was going too fast to be sure, and why would the cat be following him anyway? Most mornings the large feline darts off on his own before Hinata even gets on his bike properly.

Shrugging to himself, Hinata shakes off the thought and refocuses as the gym starts to loom in the distance.

The local neighbourhood team is a mixed team – a friendly bunch of people who just wanted exercise and have something social on the weekends. Everyone has at least ten years on Hinata, but they’re welcoming, and they happily let him join in their practices. No-one is remarkably skilled, but there’s plenty of experience there and they even play other home grown teams from other nearby towns. It’s not much, but it provides the vital practice Hinata is so desperate for in the break between semesters.

Upon arrival, everyone greets him cheerfully as always, most of them already changed and setting up the equipment in the gym’s one singular indoor volleyball court. One of the older spikers, a nice lady in her late thirties fussed over the pink marks on Hinata’s hand and the libero, her husband, had to draw her away before asking about Hinata’s new feline companion.

“Handsome cat. Hope he doesn’t bite you anymore,” he says with a grin after Hinata fishes out his phone to show him. “You wanted to practice receives right?”

“Yes please!” Hinata says eagerly, tossing his phone into his bag and hurrying to yank up his kneepads before scurrying to join everyone else on the court.

True to his expectations, the rest of the team start wrapping up their practice just as Hinata really starts hitting his stride. He wants to protest, to ask and beg them to stay a little longer because he’s still got so much energy in the tank, but they’ve always been firm on when practice ends. They’re older, they’re tired, and none of them want to fork out more money to rent the gym court for longer as well.

So Hinata bites down on his complaints and helps them tidy up and participates in the cooling down stretches even though he has every intention of staying in the gym for at least another couple of hours yet.

“Don’t stay too long,” the libero warns him with a friendly, pointed look as Hinata helps him wheel the last of the equipment away. “You don’t want to pull anything if you haven’t been exercising like you normally have for a while. Don’t punish your body.”

“I won’t,” Hinata promises. He’s already chosen the rest of his work-out to not be too intensive and has plans to attend a yoga class later.

The libero gives him a friendly pat on the shoulder and bids him farewell and Hinata waves his goodbyes to the rest of the team before he collects his stuff and heads for the showers. A quick break for a wash and something to eat, and then it’s back to it.

When the next morning dawns, Hinata is pleased to discover his muscles are only aching with the usual light thrum after a good exercise session and as he dresses, nothing twinges. He rushes through his morning routine quickly, Tobiou watching him with wide eyes as he darts around the house like a hurricane, dizzy with excitement.

Because if he hasn’t overdone it, then he’s free to go back to the gym today and get more practice in until his shift later at work. The neighbourhood team won’t be there, but Hinata has long since gotten used to getting practice in by himself.

He’s just mounted his bike when something large and heavy and with _extremely sharp claws_ lunges at his back.

 _“Gack!”_ With a loud squawk, Hinata almost topples off his bike, planting one foot firmly into the dirt so that he doesn’t crash to the ground. The large heavy thing on his back clings on for dear life, the tips of its claws just scratching Hinata’s skin beneath his shirt.

“What the _fuck?_ ” Hinata shouts, and the curtains behind the old man’s windows across the street twitch in agitation.

Hinata cranes to look over his shoulder to see what has launched itself at him to come face-to-face with wide, blue eyes set into Tobiou’s furry, shocked little face.

“ _You!”_ Hinata screeches, and in response the cat tries to scale his back even more. “ _Stop!”_ He yells and the combination of the surprise and the awful sensation of pointy claw tips raking across his skin causes Hinata to finally wobble off of his bike and crash to the ground with a loud clatter and a groan.

Tobiou, of course, lands on his feet, still staring at Hinata with eyes like saucers.

“ _What the hell was that for?_ ” Hinata hisses at the cat, keeping his voice low as he spies his neighbour’s furious face poking around his curtains. He is not in the mood for an argument with the man today.

Tobiou just blinks balefully at him, at least having the sense to look a little sheepish.

Muttering furiously under his breath, Hinata clambers back to his feet and rights his bike. Swinging a leg (stinging with fresh scrapes) across it, he shoots Tobiou one more furious look before re-mounting his bike fully.

In response, Tobiou watches him like a hawk, blue eyes unblinking, and he drops into a crouch, his rear wiggling to and fro.

“Oh no you don’t,” Hinata says warningly, raising his hands up in a pitiful display of protection. He knows what that pose means, it means Tobiou’s going to-

Hinata braces himself with a small cry as Tobiou pounces on him again but this time the cat aims better, landing his large paws across Hinata’s shoulders. Hinata stays stock still, not wanting another trip to the floor or his back ripped to shreds, as Tobiou totters on his shoulders in a weird sort of balancing act before lowering himself down until he’s draped across the breadth of them like some sort of scarf.

“Err… okay…” Hinata says slowly, relaxing as Tobiou settles down, the shock giving way to bafflement. He can barely stroke Tobiou on a good day, the cat nearly always dodges his hand, and now the overly large feline wants to lounge across his back and shoulders. “Can I help you?” He asks, tilting his head as best he can so he can look into Tobiou’s face.

Tobiou makes a little chirrupy noise but otherwise stays put, curling his front paws until they’re braced against the meat of Hinata’s shoulder.

“I… have to go?” Hinata says, pointing uselessly ahead of him.

Tobiou just blinks at him and then sort of _pats_ at his shoulder, before directing his gaze forward.

All of a sudden, Hinata thinks back to when he was heading for the gym yesterday and there was that dark shape hurtling after him that he could almost swear was Tobiou. Was it him? Could the cat actually want to come with him?

Utterly baffled, Hinata grips the handlebars and, gingerly, pushes off – starting to peddle slowly across the street. If Tobiou gets spooked by the movement, he has plenty of opportunity to jump down now.

But the cat doesn’t – instead, he hunkers down and holds his body tightly against Hinata, a warm solid presence pressing against his skin.

Still confused, but emboldened, Hinata starts peddling harder because, well, okay, if Tobiou wants to come too then why not, he supposes. At the very least the extra weight across his shoulders (which is considerable, because Tobiou is _not_ light) provides a bit of strength training, and Hinata soon feels his breath start to punch in and out of his lungs earlier than usual as he stands up on his peddles for the extra push up a steep hill.

“Hold on!” He calls to Tobiou as he nears the top, fingers braced along his brake levers in case this goes disastrously wrong. He feels ten claws dig themselves gently into his shoulder as Tobiou grips at him harder and he sucks in a breath, tilting his bike over the edge and starting his (more controlled then usual) descent down the hill towards the gym.

Tobiou manages to both stay on his shoulders _and_ not scratch him to pieces, by some miracle, and Hinata grins to himself as the road levels out and he peddles leisurely towards the gym’s bike rack, earning himself a few strange stares from other early morning regulars.

The cat leaps down neatly as Hinata pulls to a stop, hovering by his feet as he swiftly chains and locks his bike.

“What, did you feel like a change of scenery? I think you could’ve made it here without a lift, you know,” Hinata says to him with a smile, reaching out to stroke Tobiou’s head, who dodges, as usual. He puffs out a sigh and straightens, hoisting his bag more firmly over his shoulder. “Well, don’t get lost if you’ve never been here before. I’ll see you later, okay?”

But instead of shooting off like Hinata expected him to, Tobiou just starts trotting after him as he makes his way to the sliding automatic front doors, tail held high in the air. Hinata just watches him out of the corner of his eye curiously, bemused. The only time the cat had followed him anywhere before was inside his house.

“Hey! No pets!” A feminine voice sounds and Hinata’s head snaps up to spot the receptionist glaring at him from her spot at the desk. Behind him the front doors swoosh closed again, and Hinata is acutely aware of the warm, furry presence by his calf.

“Tobiou, you can’t be in here,” Hinata hisses down at the cat, and is rewarded by a wide eyed blink.

The receptionist starts to get up from her chair and Hinata makes a frantic shooing motion at him, “they don’t allow cats in the gym you big furry dummy! I’ll see you later okay?” He says urgently, trying to shuffle Tobiou back towards the doors.

Tobiou’s furry face settles back into its usual grumpy sort of look and his ears droop, before he turns swiftly and hurries back out of the doors, tail swishing to and fro madly.

“Ah, sorry about that!” Hinata apologises with a sheepish grin to the still irritated receptionist, hurrying down along the hall and out of sight before he can actually get into any trouble.

The gym’s court has been rented out for the morning by a local basketball team (who share the space with the volleyball players), but Hinata manages to find a little corner to himself to practice his goal for the morning: hitting with his left hand. His aim, he feels, is pretty solid with his dominant, right hand, but it would be _really cool_ if he could hit well with his left too.

He’s managed to squirrel away the ball cart from the store cupboard without any trouble and is throwing up his sixth ball in the air to hit against the wall when he becomes _aware_ of a sort of… manic, high-pitched scratching noise. Like a sharp object scraped across a shiny surface. Frowning, he catches the ball as it descends instead of spiking it and looks around in confusion.

He can still hear it, but he sees nothing, and no-one else around him seems bothered and so, with a shrug, he throws the ball up again.

As the ball spins in the air above, there’s a muffled _thumping._

The ball descends. Hinata raises his hand.

_Meowwwww._

Hinata jolts and the ball bounces neatly off of his skull instead.

 _“Oof!”_ Hinata grunts, scrubbing a hand through his hair and looking around wildly. Surely, _surely_ , he couldn’t have imagined that. He _knows_ that meow. But where on Earth…?

There. Through a small, rectangular window just above the floor, off to the side in the wall, a black furry face peers through. Big blue eyes blink at him and another yowl echoes, muffled, through the glass before Tobiou raises a huge paw and starts scratching at the window again.

“What the hell…” Hinata wonders, scurrying over to the window before anyone else notices.

Crouching down, he fiddles with the latch on the side of the window and slides the pane open, hissing at the cat: _“_ What are you _doing?”_

Tobiou just blinks at him before leaping neatly through the gap in the open window, deftly dodging Hinata’s frantic grab to catch him and trotting over to where the ball cart was, and just… sitting next to it. He turns luminous blue eyes back at Hinata as if to say _‘well carry on then’._

“ _Oh my god_ , you are going to get me thrown out!” Hinata whispers furiously at him, scuttling over and trying to block the cat in between his legs and the cart so nobody sees him.

Tobiou raises a paw and pats gently at the fabric of the ball cart, opening his mouth, but Hinata flaps his hands manically at him before he can start meowing.

 _“Shh!”_ He hisses, crouching down and trying to push the stupid cat gently back towards the window. “Come on, you can watch through the window, okay? I won’t be long.” This is a tiny lie – Hinata has every intention of staying at the gym for as long as possible before his shift this evening but cats don’t have the same scale of time, right?

Tobiou bats at his hands with his ginormous paws before flicking an ear and crouching close to the ground, wiggling quickly along his belly and squeezing underneath the folds of the ball cart until he was completely hidden, just a dark shape with two blue eyes peering out.

“ _Or_ … you could hide under there. I guess,” Hinata says, looking over his shoulder to see if there were any angry employees stomping over towards them. There were one or two basketball players giving him strange looks, but otherwise he seems to be in the clear. “Okay, can you _promise_ to stay under there and not move until I’m done?” Hinata whispers, wondering wildly why he’s trying to bargain with a cat.

A soft tiny meow echoes from under the cart and Hinata sighs, scraping his hands through his hair. Truthfully, it was probably going to be more trouble to try and drag Tobiou from under there unnoticed than it was to just leave him and the more time he spends dealing with this is less time he has to practice. He gives the whiskers just poking out one more suspicious look before clambering back to his feet and resumes spiking balls against the wall.

By some miracle, Tobiou stays put in his hiding spot for the rest of the time that Hinata spends at the gym. Occasionally Hinata can see a little more of his furry face, but for the most part he remains incognito while Hinata completes his reps with nervous diligence.

He ends up finishing his practice a little earlier than he would’ve liked to, ordinarily – being watched by a cat and the constant anxiety they were going to be caught was a continual fray on his nerves. And he felt a little bad leaving Tobiou to crouch like that for too long.

Refilling the cart with the balls scattered around the court, he glances around quickly before ducking down to peer underneath the fabric. Tobiou starts a little at his face’s sudden appearance, ears perking upright in alarm.

“Okay, I’m done, so head back out the window now okay?” Hinata whispers sliding a hand towards Tobiou to give him a little push.

But the cat starts moving before his fingers can reach him, wiggling out from underneath the cart and streaking across the floor – a dark blur of fur pressed close to the ground, until he slips out of the window and out of sight.

Hinata bumps his forehead against the cart with a groaning sigh of relief, until he hears someone say, “was that an animal?” in bewildered disbelief and he shoots to his feet, scrambling to put away the cart and escape before anyone can start asking questions.

“You are a menace,” Hinata grumbles when he reaches his bike, Tobiou already there and seemingly waiting for him.

The cat blinks up at him and yawns, loud and wide, and Hinata huffs, unchaining his bike and swinging a leg over it.

“Well if you want to exercise that badly you can walk home,” he says, starting to peddle slowly away.

There’s a loud, peeling meow of indignation and Hinata has just enough time to brace his shoulders before there’s a large, heavy thump across them. Four large paws scrabble and patter around before Tobiou drapes himself across him, pressing close across his neck.

“Hmmm,” Hinata hums as he stands up on his peddles in preparation for the climb back up the hill to home. His work-out at the gym might have been cut short, but at least this will make up for any lost strength training. “Are you, maybe, sorry?”

There’s a soft noise by his ear and a brush of fur against his cheek and Hinata can’t stop the fond smile wobbling over his face as he begins his climb.

* * *

Monday dawns with overcast skies.

Hinata looks up at the dark sky warily, adjusting his delivery company’s cap on his head. There wasn’t any rain currently forecast for today, but with how the weather had been recently… he hopes he doesn’t get drenched halfway through his breakfast delivery route.

“Hey,” he says softly to Tobiou, who’s stretching languidly next to him. “Don’t get caught out if it rains.”

Tobiou cracks open one eye to squint up at him and meows balefully, flicking an ear. He gives his body a shake before turning in the direction he usually sprints off in in the mornings.

“Uhh… wait!” Hinata calls before the cat can dash away.

Surprisingly – or perhaps unsurprisingly – Tobiou halts and twists his head to look up at Hinata, blue eyes wide and confused.

“It’s uhh, it’s been a week,” Hinata says, crouching down in front of the large feline. “Since we went to the vets.” His lips twitch in an amused smile as Tobiou’s ears flatten in displeasure. “Don’t worry, we’re not going back. But remember what she said? That we had to wait a week for someone to come forward for you?”

Tobiou’s ears lift again slowly until they’re perked up high and alert, and the cat tilts his head to the side.

Hinata scratches his cheek, feeling almost shy. He’d been thinking about this last night - how he could, technically, contact the local rescues and see if anyone would take Tobiou in now he was fairly sure he didn’t have an owner nearby. He could call the vets back and ask for the list but he doesn’t want to. He’s been… a _lot_ happier during the past two weeks or so that Tobiou’s been in his life – the cat making it interesting and a lot less lonely, in this town where none of his childhood friends or family were nearby.

“It’s been a week, so… do you want to stay? With me?”

Blue eyes blink once, then twice, wide and startled and then Tobiou dodges Hinata’s hand when he stretches it out slowly in favour of darting forwards and bashing his large furry head against Hinata’s forehead and the bridge of his nose.

Hinata grunts, feeling tears spring to the corner of his eyes at the sudden assault and he scrunches them shut as he wills the stinging to ease. _“Ouch!”_

There’s a quiet mewl and then something large and soft is patting gently at his forehead and Hinata cracks his eyes open to peer through a teary veil at Tobiou – who is tapping him gently with one huge paw.

“Is that a yes?” Hinata smiles, blinking rapidly to clear the last of the tears.

Tobiou’s tail swishes to and fro before he gives his forehead a more decisive pat and then, a lot more gently this time, knocks his furry head against Hinata’s before turning tail and sprinting away up the street as fast as his giant paws will carry him.

Hinata feels a large, bright grin split across his face as he clambers onto his bike, happiness spreading warm through him and warding off the early morning chill.

He’s only made it half way up the street before a loud, plaintive meow catches his attention and he stops, biting his bottom lip to stop the silly grin spreading too wide over his face. Tobiou slips out from between two houses, looking sheepish. “Yes?” He asks, voice wobbling with amusement at how quickly the cat had come back.

Blue eyes watch him for a moment before the pupils dilate in focus and then the large feline is crouching and leaping, balancing himself across Hinata’s shoulders again.

“What, you want to come too?” Hinata says, angling his head the best he can to look at Tobiou, whose furry face is only two inches away from his nose.

Tobiou makes a little chirruping noise and settles down, tightly coiled around the back of Hinata’s neck.

“Well… okay, but you have to get down when the boss or customers are around, okay? I don’t think they would be happy to have a cat near food.”

The cat makes a _mrrrring_ noise in his ear and with a flash of a grin at his furry companion, Hinata kicks off down the street again. Even if the cat is just using him as an easy means to get around, it certainly would make deliveries less lonely, at least, if Tobiou wanted to come with him.

And from the next day onward, if Hinata was heading out in his delivery company gear, Tobiou would trot out after him and spring to lay himself across Hinata’s shoulders, large paws gripping his shirt for balance.

At first, Hinata was a little wary of consequences, despite his excitement – he didn’t want to lose his job for carting a cat around with him – but Tobiou always leapt off at the restaurant and at peoples’ houses, slinking away out of sight so no-one saw him. Most of the time, he’d reappear again and take his position back across Hinata’s shoulders, looking around bright and alert as their surroundings whizzed by.

He doesn’t attempt to join Hinata for any more trips to the gym, for which Hinata is grateful, because that was a difficult enough (and incredibly weird) experience the first time around. Hinata isn’t exactly sure how Tobiou knows when he’s going to the gym and not somewhere else, but he can only guess it’s because of his clothes. Maybe they smell like workouts and the gymnasium, or something.

Sometimes, rarely, Tobiou didn’t get back on, something in the neighbourhood catching his attention and he’d dash away to Hinata’s calls of “don’t get lost!” to his retreating tail. It’s usually relatively close to his house, so Hinata doesn’t worry, and Tobiou always reappears later in the evening, sometimes home before Hinata is, waiting for him by the door.

 _‘Welcome home,’_ blue eyes seem to say, as Tobiou bullies his way through the door when Hinata unlocks it and starts up his staring routine at the fridge again.

* * *

Eyeing his target from the living room doorway, Hinata twirls the object in his fingers and hides it behind his back, easing into the room on quiet, socked feet until he’s next to the sofa where Tobiou is currently lounging.

One large black ear flicks and blue eyes swivel to look up at him as if to say ‘ _yes?’_ That furry face somehow managing to look suspicious as Hinata nears.

“I have something for you!” Hinata declares, overly brightly, and Tobiou blinks in alarm. With a flourish, he brings the blue collar out from behind his back and shows it to the feline. It’s a royal blue, the closest shade to Tobiou’s eyes Hinata could find, with a small silver disc with his number and address on it. He’s waiting until he can afford (and is brave enough) to do all of the things the vet suggested before he attempts to take Tobiou back to the clinic again, including microchipping, so before he can do that, a collar will have to do.

Tobiou sits up straight immediately, tail swishing madly behind him across the sofa cushions. As Hinata unclips the fastening and edges towards him, he reaches out with a massive paw and catches the collar, swiping it to the floor.

“Hey, come on, it’s not that bad. It’s blue!” Hinata protests, scooping it up off the floor with a frown. “Can you even see blue, actually? Ugh, never mind, look just come here. You’ll look handsome I promise,” he says, making another attempt.

But the cat just yowls, loudly, in his face and dodges around him, landing on the floor with a loud thud and skittering away further into the house, tail large and bushy in his wake.

Sighing up at the ceiling, Hinata gets to his feet and makes his way to his bedroom, and idea forming in his mind.

For the past few days, Hinata has noticed that at the bottom of his closet, where there’s a pile of old clothes in a heap at the bottom, are tufts of black fur where Tobiou has clearly been sleeping during the night. Hinata doesn’t mind – it’s not like he wears the clothes anyway, and if Tobiou finds it a comfy place to sleep, then fine. And out of all the places in the house he’s likely to have streaked off to, it’s probably this little hidey hole.

Tobiou, despite being almost eerily intelligent sometimes, for a cat, can also be incredibly predictable.

And indeed, there’s a startled yowl when Hinata flings open his closet door, Tobiou hunched and puffy-furred at the bottom, staring up at him in shock.

“Scoot over a sec,” Hinata says, nudging the cat aside with his hand, who tumbles off of the clothing mound with wide eyes. “I’m not going to try the collar again, don’t worry.”

Tobiou continues to squint at him suspiciously as he fishes out the shirt that was lying on top of the pile.

It’s an old high school volleyball jersey.

The one from second year – where he never got to play. His first and third years are decidedly more special and are hung nicely from the rack above, but this one feels... middle of the road. A symbol of frustration more than anything else.

So it’s only satisfaction he feels when he takes it through into the kitchen, Tobiou following close on his heels, and rifles in a junk drawer for a pair of scissors, which he uses to cut away a strip of cloth from the orange stripe down the sides.

“Come here,” he says softly to Tobiou, who leaps onto the kitchen counter and gazes at him with unblinking blue eyes.

Carefully, Hinata ties the strip around the cat’s neck, arranging it so it settles across his shoulder-blades in a small, orange bandana. From the same drawer he unearths a pen, and scribbles the cat’s name and his phone number across the side of the material, neatly as he can.

“There,” he murmurs, capping the pen, “how’s that?”

Tobiou swivels his head to blink down at the triangle of orange across his back and sways his tail to and fro slowly across the countertop.

“I only ever wore that shirt when I was a benchwarmer… if felt great to have one, but it felt awful not to play. It’s why I left it where it was, I suppose,” Hinata says, leaning his elbows on the counter next to Tobiou. “I didn’t get much use out of it then, so I might as well put it to use now. Better than a collar, right?” He finishes, brightly, “orange suits you!”

There’s a long moment where Tobiou just stares at him, deep blue eyes bright and thoughtful, before the cat raises himself onto his feet and rubs his large body across Hinata’s shoulder, a whisper of a deep rumble seeping out before he leaps back down to the floor and trots away, tail held high with a pointy tip.

Hinata buries his smile into his forearms.

* * *

“I hate this street, the addresses make no sense…” Hinata mumbles to himself as he stares at the maps function on his phone, pushing his bike one-handed beside him as Tobiou trots along by his feet.

The street is old and on the very edge of the area that his company delivers to – old houses dotted along the bank of the local river. It’s scenic, with the traditional buildings on an old road, spread out on a grassy slope that eases down to the waterfront. The area is popular in summer, but people normally stay away in the rainy season, as the river has a tendency to flood in heavy rainfall. The locals’ houses are safe atop the hilly bank, the water never reaching high enough, but there had still been plenty of accidents, over the years.

Hinata stops and huffs at his phone as it tries to convince him that the house he was looking for had actually been two feet back when there was nothing there. At this rate, his customer’s dinner was going to be cold.

“Maybe I should call the boss…” Hinata sighs, tapping his fingers against the back of his phone in agitation. He’s been here before, but not often, and he can never remember for the life of him whose house is who’s on the higgledy-piggledy street.

“Young man?” A voice calls.

Hinata perks up and looks around to see an older lady opening the door to her house.

“Are you the delivery boy?” She asks, shuffling out through her doorway.

“Ahh… yes! Thank-you for waiting!” Hinata says, smiling wide with relief, and hurries over to her. Out of the corner of his eye, he spies Tobiou blending in with the shadows and out of sight, as he usually did when Hinata was dealing with the customers.

Once he’s successfully handed the woman her food and collected payment, Hinata turns and looks for his feline friend, who normally pops back out again at this point – but there’s no sign of Tobiou.

Hinata frowns and turns in a little circle. The cat does dart off on occasion, but usually Hinata sees him do so, and this area is so far away from his normal delivery route he’s remiss to just cycle back home in case Tobiou can’t find his way back. There’s his number written on Tobiou’s bandana, of course, but Hinata still worries, especially in this rainy weather.

Clicking his tongue, Hinata swings a leg over his bike and mounts it, peddling slowly down the street.

“Tobiou?” He calls, trying to spy a large moving shadow or a glimpse of orange or the gleam of blue eyes in the steadily darkening evening light. “Tobiou!”

As he nears the end of the street, he finally spots it – a streak of dark fur scampering down the grassy bank ahead.

“What is he…?” Hinata breathes as he peddles a bit faster to give chase.

At the end of the street, once the houses end, the old road tapers off into a worn path. Hardened earth trodden into the ground, it snakes down the grassy bank towards the river. And along the path is one more, singular house.

It’s a strange building in a western town house style, consisting of at least three or four stories, dark and skinny and towering. As far as the locals are concerned, no-one lives there, but it’s also not completely abandoned – as nobody can buy the property no matter how many times people try. It’s become something of a ghost story for children, and teenagers often challenge each other to sneak in, though nobody has managed it.

Hinata frowns in confusion as he rolls down the path after Tobiou, who’s making a beeline for the strange old house. As he nears, he sees the cat darting up the front steps and starting to paw at the wood of the front door, yowling loudly.

“Tobiou!” Hinata calls again, getting off of his bike and resting it on its side in his hurry to scramble up the steps after the cat. “Hey, what are you doing?”

Tobiou swings his large head around to look at him, looking even more frowny than he usually did, before turning his attention back to the door and starts meowing at it again, long and loud and insistent.

“Did you… live here?” Hinata wonders, trying to peer in through one of the windows set into the wall beside the door, but all he can see inside is the vague outlines of dusty furniture in the gloom. After a moment’s hesitation, he raises a fist and raps his knuckles against the wood. “Hello? Anyone in?” He shouts, loud and clear.

Predictably, there’s no response, and Hinata bangs the side of his fist on the door before huffing and walking backwards back down the steps. Craning his head back, he peers up at the upper stories. Just like on the ground floor, all the windows are dark, and there’s no illumination to be seen.

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s in… like normal,” He says to himself, scratching his temple. Tobiou does seem oddly obsessed with the house, but if he lived there at one point… wouldn’t there be signs of life? As far as Hinata knows in the year he’s lived in this town, the house has been empty the entire time, and Tobiou couldn’t been a stray for _that_ long. He wasn’t even skinny when Hinata started noticing him in his street.

Interrupting his thoughts by chirruping madly, Tobiou abandons the front door to loop around the house, sniffing and batting his paw at the walls and any nooks or crevices he can find, Hinata following after him, bemused. As they make a full loop around the house (and confirm that there is no backdoor), Tobiou hops back up to the front door again, ready to start up his yowling routine.

“Buddy, I don’t think anyone is in,” Hinata says, crouching down next to the cat. The sun has almost set now, the tall old house casting long shadows over the two of them, and Hinata can only really see Tobiou’s eyes in the dark. “I don’t think anyone has been in for months. But if you like, I can pop a letter through the door tomorrow.”

Again, he’s not sure why he phrases this out loud, as though he’s actually bargaining with this cat, but there’s that shine of understanding in those blue eyes that compels him to.

Tobiou blinks at him, long and slow, before he gives the door one last look and then raises himself onto his feet, leaping towards Hinata’s bike in a few graceful bounds.

Following after him, Hinata lifts his bike and mounts it, waiting patiently for Tobiou to leap onto his shoulders before he sets off. Once the cat’s heavy presence is wrapped around his shoulders once more, he starts peddling back up the path along the bank, towards the old street and home. _His_ home, and maybe Tobiou’s too, once he’s confirmed there’s no-one waiting for the cat in the skinny dark house behind him. A large part of him wants that to be true, that Tobiou is just curious rather than waiting for a family behind that door, and that Tobiou will always come home with him. But the thought that his furry friend might have somewhere else to return to will haunt him until he solves it, so he’ll stop by tomorrow, as promised, and try again. Slip a letter under the door, and see.

As he gets to the crest of the bank, he glances over between the houses downwards, towards the old abandoned house once more, and stops.

For just a second, a flash, he thinks he can see a bespectacled young man in one of the windows, but then he blinks and nobody is there at all.

Two paws grip his shoulder tighter and Hinata shakes his head, refocusing on the road ahead of him and continues on to home.


	3. Chapter Three

_“It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.” – Agnes Repplier_

* * *

Tobiou’s large blue eyes flick to and fro, watching the volleyball on the screen zip from one side to the other in a particularly long rally, sitting upright and alert atop the kotatsu.

Behind him, Hinata mimics his posture, eyes fixated on the screen as he chews on the end of his pencil.

It’s not a new game, the recording that’s playing, it’s from a world championship match between Brazil and Poland from a few years ago, but it’s one of Hinata’s favourites. The rally ends with a point for Brazil, and Hinata grins before looking back down at the form in his lap, in synch with the time-out that he knows from memory is currently being called by Poland’s coach.

It’s the application form for the university’s volleyball club. Most of his paperwork for re-taking the school year was already completed – submitted pretty quickly after he got his disastrous results back from his end of year exams and was hauled into a faculty advice office by a friendly, but despairing, professor.

He had spent all of his first year not even being a bench warmer – he was a back-up for the back-ups, one of many on the team, and it was a position he was far too familiar with at this point for his liking. And because he never actually _made_ the team, he had to reapply again.

Originally, Hinata had taken the need to submit another application as a blow, until the team captain – possibly the most patient person Hinata has ever met – had kindly pointed out that it meant he got to try out all over again. Which meant another opportunity to show his skills to the team’s coach and the other members and the thought had fuelled Hinata with a renewed vigour to train hard across the school break so he could _finally_ earn his place.

Filling out the last section on the form, Hinata looks up in time to see Poland’s star player score a service ace. In front of him, Tobiou wiggles a little in his spot and Hinata snorts in amusement. The cat tended to ignore anything else that was on tv, but for some reason he was absolutely fixated on any volleyball game Hinata put on. Maybe it was just the ball flying across the screen that captured his attention, but nevertheless the cat certainly had taste.

“Maybe when I make the team this year I can smuggle you in to watch a real game,” Hinata says as he drops the completed form on the cushions beside him and leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

Tobiou makes a chirruping noise and glances back towards him, blue eyes large.

“I’m joking,” Hinata hurries to add, taking that to be hope shining in those big eyes. He still hasn’t forgotten trying to chase Tobiou out the gym the first time around.

The cat squints at him before turning his attention back to the screen.

The game draws to a close – a win for Brazil – and Hinata switches the television off. Turning to peer out of the living room windows, he studies the clouds above. The rain has been coming and going, unpredictable for days, and although the clouds are as grey as ever, they’re not rainstorm black. Hopefully, it should stay at a drizzle at worst and Hinata can get his deliveries done quickly so he can go to the gym.

Tobiou is dancing around his feet as he pulls on his cap and crouches to tie his laces, obviously eager to get out and about. Hinata smiles fondly as the cat bobs in the entryway, tail high and quivering. His eyes land on the orange triangle of his bandana across his shoulder blades and a surge of vigour fills him.

He wants a jersey that will mean something. A sign of victory; a dream achieved.

And the only way to get there is to work hard.

Hinata stands with renewed enthusiasm, ready for the lunch rush. “Time to beat my delivery record!” He declares. “And then I’m going to do one hundred serves!”

Tobiou blinks up at him, unimpressed, and just pats at the door as if to say, _you need to leave first._

Hinata flings open the door, causing Tobiou to jump a little at the force of it, and all but sprints for his bike. Ensuring his delivery bag is secured, he slings a leg over the saddle and waits for the usual thud of furry weight across his shoulders as Tobiou leaps and settles across them. “Ready?” He calls, and as he feels two paws squeeze his shoulder he pushes off, standing upright on the peddles and pumping his thighs on his way to the restaurant just as drizzle starts to settle like mist in the air.

* * *

“I’m starting to forget what the sun looks like…” Hinata grumbles to himself as he mounts his bike, two days later.

Overcast and drizzling for a while now, the weather was dreary, but not heavy. Hinata _had_ been hopeful it signalled the end of the constant rain and that sunny skies were coming at last. Unfortunately, the drizzle then started to come heavier and heavier until the rain started to fall hard and steady, incessant for the past forty-eight hours.

His boss normally didn’t send him out on deliveries in weather this bad, as he only had his bike and the town’s streets were hilly and slippery, but Hinata had called him and insisted that he would be fine doing at least a few. He couldn’t afford to lose out on too much work, and people were more likely to order in in wet weather anyway.

His last delivery finished, he should be heading for home, but there’s one more stop he wants to make first.

Tobiou hadn’t joined him when he left the house earlier – he’d peered up at the dark clouds with squinty blue eyes before choosing to dart away between the houses instead. Hinata couldn’t really blame him, he’d only get soaked wrapped around his shoulders.

He’s half expecting the cat to already be back at home, huddled under the awning and waiting for Hinata to open the door, but the day is still young and Tobiou could very well still be out and about. And there’s one place, not too far from where Hinata is now, that he wants to double check.

The old, skinny house slowly looms into view as Hinata carefully navigates the slick path leading down to it. He’d abandoned his bike further up where the other houses were, not wanting to risk his tyres slipping and a tumble down the hill.

He’d slipped a note with his details under the house’s door the day after they’d investigated the place like he promised, but he had received no response. Not that he was expecting one.

But sometimes, on delivery routes, Tobiou jumps off and doesn’t return immediately back to Hinata once he’s dealt with the customer. And Hinata’s pretty sure his feline friend is always heading off towards this direction whenever he slinks away from him.

As usual, the tall house is quiet with no signs of life, and Hinata peers through one of the windows at the front to confirm the same sight as before – dark rooms with furniture covered in dusty sheets. With a shrug, he looks around in a full circle, and when he spots no immediate sign of the cat he cups his hands by his mouth and hollers his name. “Tobiou?”

There’s a chirp, soft and quiet under the constant patter of the rain atop the house’s porch roof and Hinata cranes an ear before calling again. _“Tobiou?”_

Another noise, louder this time, and Hinata turns on his heel to see Tobiou pop up from the side of the house, ears perked up high.

“There you are,” Hinata says, crossing the porch to join him. “Scoping out the haunted house again?”

Tobiou meows plaintively at him, looking as cross as it’s possible for a cat to look.

“I really don’t think anyone is here, you know,” Hinata goes on, and he raps his knuckles against the front door to prove his point.

Tobiou swishes his tail madly to and fro before leaping up onto the porch and trotting over to him. He knocks his head hard against Hinata’s shin (he always does this – Hinata thinks he’s _trying_ to do that thing where cats rub their cheeks across things, but Tobiou just ends up headbutting him instead.) And with a rumbly growly sort of noise in his throat, the cat sweeps his displeased eyes over the front door one more time before starting to scamper off up the dirt path.

Hinata puffs out a sigh as he watches him go. The cat’s fur is sparkling with clinging drops of rainwater, some of it starting to tuft into clumps, and the bandana around his neck is looking damp around the edges. At least he’s not soaked, so he can’t have been here too long, nosing around the abandoned house.

Making sure the hood of his rain mac is up properly, Hinata jogs down the steps and is about to follow Tobiou up the hill when there’s swishing sound behind him – like curtains being pulled across their railing.

Pausing, he glances wildly over his shoulder, and he nearly trips and falls into the mud when suddenly there’s a _face_ peering at him from one of the windows next to the front door.

But then with a blink it’s gone and Hinata gapes at the dark, empty pane, heart thudding. He rubs his at his eyes and wonders if he imagined the young man peering at him from behind the glass or whether he should go _check_ or-

_Meowwww._

Hinata’s head snaps around at Tobiou’s long and loud insistent call from atop the hill.

“I… coming!” Hinata calls back, and he gives the windows one last long stare, before shaking himself and starting to jog up the hill.

It’s probably all the stories he hears that the house is haunted, coupled with the rainy, spooky atmosphere, he reasons. He’s overthinking things – faces can’t _disappear_ with a blink and even if someone _was_ there, wouldn’t they react to someone and their cat lurking around their house? Especially if Tobiou has been a regular visitor.

The cat in question is looking up at him, unimpressed where he sits by Hinata’s bike, his ears flat as the rain continues to fall down.

“Sorry,” Hinata apologises, as he rights his bike and mounts it.

Tobiou flicks an ear, a water droplet spraying off the end, before he turns tail and starts streaking towards home, forgoing leaping onto Hinata’s shoulders.

(They’d both discovered pretty quickly that Hinata’s rain mac was too slippery to make for a good perch when Tobiou had promptly slid straight off him with a yowl the first time he’d tried.)

With one more final look down the hill at the old house, Hinata shakes away any lasting thoughts of the ghostly face and starts peddling after Tobiou, eager to get home in the warm and dry.

* * *

The next day, Hinata receives a call from his boss first thing in the morning before the restaurant is even open. The man is apologetic, but firm, telling him he isn’t going to send him on any deliveries today, no matter how much Hinata insists he can do them. There’s a storm coming, and the rain is only getting heavier.

“I don’t want you getting hurt,” the man tells him kindly, and Hinata sighs out his agreement before ending the call.

“Weekend in, I guess,” he says with disappointment, directing his voice down at where Tobiou was finishing his breakfast not two minutes ago by his feet, only to find an empty dish. “Tobiou?”

The sound of a loud paw being dragged down wood takes into the hallway, where Tobiou is sitting in the entry way by the front door, looking up at it hopefully.

“You want to go out?” Hinata asks dubiously, crossing over to him and pulling the door aside so Tobiou can stick his head out.

The cat flicks his tail and his whiskers twitch, taking in the rainfall and the thin streams of water running down the street. Blue eyes glance up at Hinata before the cat leaps out of the doorway and streaks away, small bursts of water spraying up where his large paws meet the ground.

“Don’t stay out too long!” Hinata calls after him, raising his voice to be heard over the rain.

He spends the rest of the day seeing to menial chores around the house, anything to keep him busy and moving so he wouldn’t dwell on the constant sound of raindrops along the roof and how Tobiou was still outside. As the day wears on, the rain falls harder, and Hinata finds himself checking the front door for Tobiou more and more often, until he’s almost hovering around the front of his house.

Raking his fingers through his hair, Hinata pulls open the door for the fourth time that hour to peer outside. The rain has now upgraded itself to a downpour – heavy globs of water streaming from the sky in thick sheets, until it was almost impossible to see the houses further down the street. He glances up at the dark, heavy clouds above with a frown. The sky is dark as far as the eye can see and there’s no sliver of blue sky to be seen.

Hinata chews on a thin strip of skin by his fingernail nervously. He really doesn’t like the idea of Tobiou being out in this weather – the rain is falling much harder than it has been until now and it makes the steep hills of the town’s streets slick and treacherous.

 _One more hour_ , he tells himself. He’ll wait for one more hour and then he’ll go looking.

In the end, it only takes twenty minutes.

There’s a deep, threatening rumble that echoes around the walls of Hinata’s house, followed by a crack and then Hinata’s grabbing his coat, and dashing out into the rain.

He’s not going to wait around any longer when there’s a thunderstorm outside.

He forgoes his bike in favour of going on foot – with the thick rivers of water sluicing down the roads it would be harder to cycle anyway, and definitely no quicker.

Hinata cups a hand around his mouth as he starts a loop around his street, calling the cat’s name while fervently hoping that he was just taking shelter by one of the nearby houses. “Tobiou? Tobiou!”

There’s another rumble and the sky lights up in the distance.

Hinata shivers and pulls his coat tighter around himself.

He makes two full loops of the street around his house, shouting at the top of his lungs all the while before he has to concede that Tobiou had gone farther out.

“Please don’t tell me he’s gone back to that stupid house,” Hinata mutters, scrubbing his fingers through his rain-sodden fringe. He dithers a little, feet squelching in soaked shoes, wondering whether he should go all the way there to check or not. It’s a decent distance, on foot, and in the time it will take to get there Tobiou could very well come back home and there would be no-one to let him in.

Lightning flashes again as a car rumbles past down the street – its tires shooting up a wave of water Hinata only just manages to dodge getting drenched by.

He spins to yell angrily at the departing headlights when he gets distracted by the sight of the disturbed water by the curb swishing and swirling, before once again forming a small river rushing down the slope.

A river.

The old house is by _a river_.

And it floods. It floods almost every year, when it rains hard.

Hinata twists on his heel so sharply he almost sprains an ankle as he turns in the direction of the riverbank and breaks into a sprint.

 _Please don’t be there, please don’t be there…_ he begs internally as he runs.

He keeps up his mantra of “Tobiou? _Tobiou!_ ” as he makes his way through the streets, gasping for air as he struggles up and down the hills, trying to keep his footing even on the rain slicked stones. He sees or hears nothing, other than the rain roaring down around him and the splashes of his feet in the puddles as the sky groans and flashes above.

When he makes it to the old road with the crooked houses he has to bend over to plant his hands on his knees to catch his breath. It punches in and out of him in sharp bursts, and when he finally raises his head his lungs almost stop dead.

Between two houses he can see down the bank to the river, which has swollen and grown with the sudden influx of rainfall. Dark, muddy water rushes past, already halfway up the hilly banks leading to the old road, swirling and incessant.

“Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_ …” Hinata curses, as he stumbles over the cobbles down the road until he reaches what should be the dirt trodden path down to the tall, skinny house down below.

The house is still there – tall and imposing, darkened with rainwater and occasionally lit when the sky flashed above. The water from the river has risen to join it, to the point where Hinata can’t see the porch anymore, the water having gotten to a level where even the ground floor windows were almost obscured.

The path isn’t even there anymore, the rain having soaked the ground so badly the whole slope is just a mash of mud and grass. Hinata nearly slips more than once as he eases down it, edging slowly towards the house and the rising water.

 _This is stupid_ , he thinks to himself as he nearly trips over and has to wave his arms wildly to keep his balance on the slippery ground. _This is really dangerous, I could get swept away by that river._

The closer he gets, the louder the rush of the river is, surging along in a dark mire of sludge and rainwater. The current isn’t normally that strong, but now it’s swollen and bloated and the overflow of water is all heading downstream as fast it can go. It’s dangerous and no-one even knows he’s here, but Hinata just _has_ to check this house before he can go back home.

Lightning flashes again overhead, lighting the house up like a spotlight before it fades in a flash. But it’s all Hinata needs to see what he’s been looking for.

There, crouched on the porch roof, dark fur mingling into the rain sodden tiles so that he was almost invisible, is Tobiou.

 _“Oh my god,”_ Hinata breathes, heart stopping in his chest. Inching as close to the house and the rising water as he dares, he cups his hands around his mouth. “ _Tobiou!”_ He screams, at the top of his lungs, so hard his throat aches from the effort.

The cat doesn’t seem to hear him, hunkered down on the roof and unmoving, wild blue eyes darting everywhere but towards Hinata.

Hinata calls out once more, but is again met with no response. He glances down at the water inching closer to his feet. At the middle, the heart of the river, the water rushes along at a speed he could never hope to cope with. But here, at the edge, it runs slower. Brown eyes flick up again at Tobiou, and then back down at the water before Hinata sucks in a breath, steeling his nerves and plows forward, wading into the water.

His jeans are immediately drenched as water soaks the fabric up to his hips as he heads forward until the river water is up to his knees. The ground is oil-slick slippery beneath him, but sturdy, and he cranes his neck up as he gets closer to the old, flooded house. He can’t quite see the full view of the roof from this angle, just the slope closest to him, but he tries again. _“Tobiou!”_

This time there’s a meow, loud and wailing from above and Hinata’s heart stutters in relief as a large, black shape reveals itself at the crest of the roof. “ _Tobiou, I’m here!”_

Tobiou yowls back and starts inching slowly towards the edge, paws slipping over the tiles.

“Careful…” Hinata hisses under his breath, biting his lip in anxiety as Tobiou gets closer. If the cat slips and falls from the roof, he’ll plunge straight into the water and there’s no way Hinata would be able to get to him in time.

Finally at his destination, Tobiou stares down at him with huge eyes, clinging at the edge of the rooftop.

Hinata clucks his tongue. He’s still too far away for Tobiou to jump to him, otherwise he thinks the cat would’ve tried by now. His feet feel almost numb, submerged in the freezing rainwater, but he forces them to shuffle forwards. The water level climbs slowly until it's level with his hips and he keeps his arms out wide for balance. If he slips over now, he’ll have to start swimming and he can already feel the beginnings of the strong river current starting to pull at his clothes.

“Tobiou!” He calls, spreading his arms even further, “you’re going to have to jump!”

Tobiou warbles back, wobbling at the edge but not moving.

“I’ll catch you! I promise!”

The sky groans and rumbles overhead, and another spark of lightning causes Tobiou to jump and he almost falls clear off the roof, his distressed meow lost to the roar of the weather.

“ _Come on!”_ Hinata urges, voice choked and pleading. “I _promise_ I won’t drop you, come on Tobiou…”

The cat stares down at him with huge blue eyes for another long moment, before he crouches and springs.

Hinata has just enough time to ensure his feet are secure in the mud before a dark lump of drenched fur hurtles down and into his arms. The impact spreads his knees wide, and he grits his teeth with the effort to remain standing in the deep water as he clenches his arms tight around the precious bundle in his arms.

“You _idiot_ ,” he seethes into drenched fur, his voice too thick with relief to sound truly angry. “Why did you come here in a thunderstorm you stupid, _stupid_ cat…”

Tobiou makes a pitiful, soft noise against his chest where he’s burrowed and Hinata bends his head to press his nose and lips to the top of the cat’s wet head before adjusting his hold and starting turn around.

“Alright, don’t move,” he orders as he starts his slow shuffle from the house and towards the sloping hill. He feels Tobiou hunker closer to him, claws digging deep into his coat and he in turn clings to sopping wet fur even tighter. Progress is slow as the water grabs at his legs and holds fast and Hinata’s thighs and calves are screaming with the effort to keep moving. He has to keep tossing his head to shake off the rain drops clinging to his cheeks, his eyelashes and his dripping fringe. As the water slowly recedes down his legs he starts to stumble, his feet numb from being submerged for so long.

Tobiou makes no move or effort to shift in his arms when they finally break free of the water, and Hinata tucks him close under his chin as he starts the laborious climb back up the hill. Going up is a little easier than coming down, as he can stuff his feet into clumps of mud for a foothold as he stumbles. Now the water is gone, his jeans cling to him like a uncomfortable second skin, and Hinata can feel droplets starting to slide their way from his soaked hair down the back and sides of his neck, seeping into his collar beneath his coat. He starts to tremble, teeth chattering as the rain continues to hammer down, stinging his face and hands.

When the ground finally starts to level out, Hinata’s knees shake and judder and then finally give way once his ruined trainers hit cobbles, and he slumps to the ground in a heap, chest heaving for air. In his arms, Tobiou shifts and makes a small noise, but is otherwise still and it’s only then Hinata notices the cat too is shaking like a leaf.

The cat’s thick fur is completely soaked through with rain water, making him look oddly skinny. Hinata curses and reaches with numb fingers for his coat zipper, frozen fingertips fumbling with it before they finally catch purchase and he yanks it down. Once open he arranges a strangely pliant Tobiou until he’s pressed up against his chest, snuggled into the folds of his jumper. There’s a soft mewling noise and Hinata’s heart squeezes as he struggles to pull the zipper up again as far he can so Tobiou is cocooned inside. It’s not pleasant, having a soaking wet ball of heavy fur pressed up against the only part of him that was previously dry, but it’s worth it, to help keep Tobiou warm until they get home.

Hinata has to take another few minutes to sit and shake and try and get his breathing and tremulous heart rate under control before he finally feels like he’s regained enough feeling in his legs to clamber back to his feet. It’s a slow, ungainly rise, with his arms trapped holding Tobiou close and no good for keeping his balance, and his mud caked feet slide and slip until he finally stands.

Cradling Tobiou as close as he can, Hinata starts trudging through the old street on the long walk home, shoulders hunched up by his ears.

He’s halfway along, at the peak of the street where the raging river is visible through the gaps in the houses and the tall shadow of the old, abandoned house can just be seen still standing amongst the waters when a hand suddenly clasps around his elbow.

Hinata jolts suddenly and shouts with fright, and he would have lost his balance completely and fallen to the floor in a heap with Tobiou if the hand hadn’t held onto him tight.

Blinking madly to clear the rain from his eyes, heart thudding in his throat, Hinata stares wildly at the person who grabbed him.

It’s a young man, about his age, with wavy blond hair and eyes that looks almost gold behind refined glasses. Oddly, the stranger seems to be completely dry, even though he should be sprinkled with rain water at least, despite his relative shelter under the closest house’s awning.

“Here,” the man says, his voice quiet and still, as he raises his other hand and holds out a large umbrella.

Hinata blinks at it dumbly, mouth gaping.

“Do you want to get even wetter?” The man asks, tilting his head at him in question. The words sound almost lazy and his expression is oddly blank, like he’s uninterested despite his query. “Not that it’s possible to get any more soaked than you are, I suppose… the cat might appreciate it, though,” he goes on to say, golden eyes eyeing the bundle wrapped up in Hinata’s arms.

Hinata glances back down at Tobiou, whose eyes are pressed closed as he shivers against his chest and, silently, he shifts his grip until he can hold the cat securely with one arm, reaching out with the other for the umbrella.

The strange man lets go of his elbow and presses the handle into his palm. “Hurry home, now,” he says, in that same, bland tone of voice and then he turns on his heel, and starts to stroll away down the street.

“I… thank-you!” Hinata shouts after him, once his throat finally becomes unstuck. The umbrella, he discovers, is a modern type, with a button set into the handle to open it one-handed. He presses it and it extends and opens above him and with relief he raises it so that the fat rain drops finally stop pelting him.

“You can return it to me tomorrow,” the man calls back over his shoulder and Hinata frowns in confusion.

“Tomorrow?” He wonders. How will he do that? He doesn’t even know who this guy is…

But before he can voice this, lightning flashes overhead and when the sky dims again the strange man has simply blinked out of view.

Hinata stands there in muted shock, the rain pattering against the fabric web of the umbrella above him. It’s only when Tobiou shifts slightly in his arms that he remembers his priority, and he turns back towards home, walking as fast as his bone-cold legs will allow him.

* * *

By the time Hinata makes it home, there is very little of him that isn’t completely soaked through, despite the large umbrella he was donated. He feels a little warmer at least, after power walking the entire way home (he just couldn’t muster up the energy to jog for longer than a few bounds at a time) and his leg muscles are screaming at him.

Stumbling to a halt outside his front door, he tries to keep holding the umbrella up by mashing the handle between his cheek and shoulder in order to fish out his keys from his pocket, but it keeps slipping. Frustrated, he lets it drop to the floor so he has enough manoeuvrability to hook his sodden fingers around the metal loop in his pocket and draw out his keys. It takes more than one attempt to get them into the lock but once he manages it, he shoves open the door with his foot and all but collapses into the entryway.

The warmth of his house hits Hinata like a wave and his knees immediately wobble with the relief of it, and he’s sorely tempted to slump in a heap right there in the hallway. But he sucks in a deep breath and forces himself to totter through into the living room, until he makes it to the sofa. At which point he just flops against the cushions, slumping against them with Tobiou still clutched to his chest, uncaring if his soaking wet body was slowly getting the material beneath him damp as well.

The cat in his arms had stopped trembling a short while before Hinata arrived home, but he’s still and quiet and pliant against him, and so unlike his normal self.

Hinata allows himself a minute or two to just sit and slowly catch his breath back into his aching lungs and waits for his heart to stop racing. His muscles twitch and jump in a combination of over exertion and the cold slowly starting to seep into them from the freezing rainwater still drenching him.

Finally, he unzips his coat to unveil Tobiou, who blinks up at him slowly with glazed blue eyes. The cat is still soaked, his fur slick and clinging to every outline of his frame. The sight sparks movement again into Hinata’s body and he sits up, gently depositing the cat next to him and lurching to his feet.

The cat sits there, silent and vacant, slowly starting to shudder again as Hinata hurries from the room as fast as his trembling legs will allow.

In the hallway, he throws off his coat and ruined socks and shoes towards the vague direction of the entryway. He heads to the bathroom, where he strips off his sodden clothing and dumps it in the laundry basket and grabs every clean towel he find. He has just enough presence of mind to grab an oversized jumper from his room to throw on (not that he thinks Tobiou will overly care if he’s just in his underwear, but something makes him want to cover up regardless) and he pads back into the living room.

Slowly, he lays a towel on the cushions next to Tobiou - who hasn’t moved from where he left him, still a quiet and shaky ball of drenched fur. The cat allows Hinata to lift him up with no fuss at all and place him on the towel, and he sits there silently as Hinata picks up another one and begins to rub it across his fur.

Hinata goes through three towels before Tobiou’s thick black fur starts resembling its normal appearance, now sitting in damp clumps rather than slicked down against his skin. Hinata looks down at his diminished pile of towels with a frown before an idea sparks in his head and he gets back to his feet.

“I’ll be right back,” he promises quietly as he dashes from the room into the hallway again, throwing his coat back on and stuffing his feet into the nearest pair of dry shoes. Throwing open the door, he darts back outside, a violent shudder immediately shooting through him at the drop in temperature, and all but runs to the house next door.

His neighbour answers shortly after he starts banging insistently on their front door – a middle aged woman, eyes wide and baffled at the sight of him in a coat and sandals and bare legs in the middle of a rainstorm.

“Can I borrow a hair dryer?” Hinata pants out, having just enough wits about him to drop into a polite bow at least. “Please, it’s very urgent.”

Perhaps it’s his tone of voice, or how incredibly strange his demand is, but his neighbour just opens and closes her mouth silently before departing back into the house. Hinata panics briefly that she’s just ignoring him before she reappears again shortly, wordlessly handing a hair dryer out to him.

Hinata babbles his thanks as he takes it from her, dropping into two bows at her baffled “you’re welcome” before spinning on his heel and dashing back to his house.

Tobiou actually looks up at him and flicks his ears from his place on the sofa when Hinata hurtles back into the living room after once again flinging off his coat and shoes. Hinata is deeply relieved to see it – and the slight spark that is starting to return to those deep blue eyes.

Surprisingly, the cat doesn’t react at all when Hinata plugs in the hair dryer and brandishes it at him. Hinata hopes wildly that doesn’t mean he’s in shock or anything as he sets the dryer to its lowest setting.

Gently, Hinata uses his fingers to tease and fluff Tobiou’s fur under the gentle heat of the dryer. As he works, the clumps smooth out into its usual soft, thick coat and the cat starts blinking in slow contentment, rather than in a stupor.

As Hinata finishes, Tobiou raises himself up onto his feet, standing for the first time since he was on the porch roof and starts patting at the hair dryer with one large paw. He bats at it insistently and, bewildered, Hinata turns it, thinking now Tobiou’s warmed up perhaps the heat of it was annoying. But Tobiou is still insistent, smacking it wildly until it spins a little in Hinata’s lax grip, and then there’s a blast of warm air ghosting across his face.

Huffing, Hinata switches it off, and glances over at the cat, whose eyes seem to be sparkling.

“Glad you found that funny,” he grumbles, but it’s around a smile. Tobiou must be feeling better.

There’s a soft noise from somewhere in Tobiou’s throat and the cat reaches out again, until he’s batting his giant paw against Hinata’s fringe – which is starting to dry crusty and wild against his forehead.

“What?” Hinata mumbles as the cat continues to smack his head, squinting his eyes against the bombardment. The cat makes a warbling noise in return and stops patting him briefly to tap the dryer instead, still in Hinata’s hand, before resuming his assault on Hinata’s hair.

“Oh,” Hinata says, realisation dawning, and leans back so Tobiou can’t reach him anymore. A familiar frowny expression settles over the cat’s face. “No, it’s fine, the hair dryer will probably make it worse to be honest,” he tells him, raking his fingers through his wet, tangled hair and wincing when they get caught up in the knots. He’ll have to remember to wrestle a comb through it later.

Tobiou lowers himself to sit back down, tail swishing slowly over the sofa cushions, face unreadable, when suddenly there’s a quiet gurgling noise.

Hinata quirks an eyebrow as the cat glances down at himself, seemingly in surprise at his rumbling stomach, and feels a bubble of laughter burst out of him, amusement spreading delightfully warm through him.

“Hold on,” he promises, and he gets to his feet. He stops by his bedroom first, taking the time to pull on soft pyjama bottoms and thick socks now he isn’t hurried by the urgency of getting Tobiou warm and dry. Fully clothed and finally starting to feel warm himself, Hinata pads into the kitchen and throws whatever leftovers he can find for himself into the microwave, too tired to even _think_ about cooking and pulls out a bowl and the milk from the fridge. He pours out a generous helping and warms it up once his own meal pings in the microwave, and once he’s balanced everything in his arms, he returns back to the living room.

Tobiou’s ears perk as he sits down next to him, plonking the large bowl of milk on top of the kotatsu and sticking his feet under the blanket.

“There, I know I’ve been holding back on giving you any lately,” he says softly, and Tobiou makes the small leap to the tabletop with a chirrup, starting to make short work of the milk. Hinata grins as white droplets splash their way across Tobiou’s fur with the force of his enthusiasm and he digs in eagerly to his own dinner.

With food in his belly and his eyes starting to droop, Hinata is too tired to even think about stripping off his warm clothing for a shower, and so, with a huge yawn, he rocks his way off the sofa. It’s probably still early in the evening, but he’s too exhausted to stay awake any longer, and he shuffles off to his room, aware of how Tobiou jumps down and follows along at his heels.

Climbing under the covers, Hinata lets a long, groaning sigh seep out and he cracks his eyes open to see Tobiou sitting by the edge of the bed, staring up at him with luminous blue eyes. Normally, the cat slinks into his wardrobe to sleep in amongst the pile of old clothes lining the bottom, but tonight…

“Just come up here, if you want to,” Hinata says sleepily, and there’s a blink of hesitation before Tobiou crouches and springs, a heavy weight hitting the mattress.

Hinata rolls over onto his back as Tobiou navigates his way across the duvet, large paws trying to avoid the lumps where Hinata’s body lay underneath. Slowly, the cat makes it up to the pillow next to Hinata and he flops over, large body nestling into the duck down.

“I’m really glad you’re okay,” Hinata yawns as Tobiou blinks at him from across the duvet, long and slow. “You really scared me.”

Tobiou’s eyes seem to widen slightly in the gloom, and Hinata shuffles slightly in the bedding, fighting back another yawn as exhaustion starts to sink in deep.

“You know,” Hinata starts to say as the cat’s blue eyes start to close. “If that’s really where you used to live, I can look more into it.”

Tobiou’s eyes blink open again to watch him, bright even in the dark.

“I think that house really is abandoned,” he continues, voice whisper-soft. “But if you had a family that lived there, I can go to the library, or something. Find out who lived there maybe. Try and find them?”

Tobiou raises himself back up onto his feet, standing over Hinata.

“I wish you could stay here with me,” Hinata admits, his throat constricting just a little, “but if it’s that important, so important that you’d almost drown for it, I’ll find out who lived there and you can go back to them. I promise.”

Tobiou starts moving and Hinata is temporarily disappointed, thinking the cat is going to leap off and leave, but then the large feline steps onto his chest, ginormous paws cushioning his weight. He hovers there, staring down at Hinata, before he eventually lowers and settles down against him.

Hinata raises a tentative hand and rests it across Tobiou’s back, who for once lets him. Encouraged, Hinata runs his fingers down the cat’s spine over and over. “I’ll start tomorrow,” he swears, starting to feel exhaustion pull at his eyelids.

There’s a rustle of fur against the sheets and Tobiou is sliding across and up, until his large head is bumping the underside of Hinata’s chin. Hinata’s heart skips and seizes in his chest and he has to press his stinging eyelids shut tight. He doesn’t want Tobiou to leave, wishes he can stay forever, but the last thing he wants is to keep him here unwilling if there’s answers to be found.

Thoughts and worries bubble in his mind but his body is so tired it’s not long at all before the clutches of sleep rise up to claim him, dragging him under as he feels the rumbles of a deep purr spread through his chest.

* * *

Usually, Hinata rises with the sun, eager to get his day started as soon as daylight starts to peek over the horizon.

But after yesterday, he was so exhausted that it’s not until the sun is already high in the sky, sunlight filtering in bright and strong through his window and across his eyelids that he starts to stir. Sucking in a deep breath through his nose and letting it out again, Hinata shuffles beneath his duvet as awareness starts to come back to him slowly.

Or at least he tries to. A small frown creases its way across his forehead as he finds himself pinned by something heavy. It starts at his chest but then spreads all the way down his body and, as confusion starts to make itself known in his mind, Hinata blinks his sleep-sticky eyes open.

The first thing he sees once his vision sharpens is an arm, slung across his chest and ending in a large hand that splays across the bedsheets. Hinata’s eyes widen and he feels his heart start to tap against his ribs as he follows the arm up until it reaches a bare shoulder, then a torso and then finally the other person’s head, half pillowed on Hinata’s shoulder and half on the bedding below.

Hinata has a half a second to register that it’s a man’s head before a strangled shout of alarm wrenches its way from his throat and a bolt of adrenaline allows him to shoot out from the stranger’s weight pinning him down.

The stranger in his bed snorts and Hinata stares in disbelief, mind foggy and slow with panic, as the man opens his eyes and looks blearily up at him, sleepy and confused.

Hinata wonders wildly whether he’s dreaming, that if he was so wiped from yesterday that his exhausted mind has whipped up a particularly vivid dream. Then he feels a set of toes brush against his shin where the man’s legs shift and that thought pops immediately. With a shriek, Hinata flings his way backwards across the mattress, wrestling wildly with the bedsheets still clinging to him until he lands on his bedroom floor in a heap.

Scrabbling into a sitting position, Hinata shuffles madly backwards until his back clunks against his closet behind. Chest fluttering as panicked breaths stutter in and out, he can hear his heartbeat roaring in his ears as he stares, wide-eyed and unblinking, up at the man starting to sit up in his bed.

He’s a young man, about Hinata’s age, but bigger and broader, with smooth black hair and sharp eyes. He doesn’t seem particularly concerned with Hinata at all at the moment, instead gazing down at his own arms in rapt fascination – as though he’s never seen them before. The man runs his hands across his own forearms, his chest and stomach (distressingly bare) and then up his neck until he’s patting his face and hair, eyes wide with disbelief.

 _“Who the fuck are you and why are you in my house?”_ Hinata manages to yell, finally getting his tongue to co-operate, but sheer panic leaves his voice high and thin and strangled.

The man, who is twisted away to look down his back, ignores him, still looking down at his body as though it’s all new to him. Then, bizarrely, a wobbly, excited smile starts to stretch its way across his face. “I’m back!” The man says, voice deep but bright with elation, “I’m finally _back!"_

“ _Oi!_ ” Hinata shouts, feeling rage at being ignored starting to bubble in his veins and replace the shock. “Who the _hell_ are you?” He demands again, scrambling until he manages to get to his feet with shaking knees, his anger starting to fuel his bravery.

All at once the man stops smiling and whips his gaze around to blink at Hinata, wild like a deer caught in the proverbial headlights. His face goes slack with shock and for several moments he gapes at Hinata wordlessly before looks back down at himself and then back up. Then he gathers up the duvet and bundles it against his chest, as though suddenly aware that he is in fact, sitting there naked.

For a long minute, it’s a stand-off, with them both staring at each other in silence before Hinata launches for his phone on his bedside table, fully intent on calling the police about the strange naked burglar in his bed. Or stalker. Or murderer. Or all three.

He’s just managed to unlock his screen with a trembling thumb before a large hand reaches over and clamps down on his wrist. Hinata flicks his eyes up to see that the man has dived across the bed to grab at him, eyes panicked, and he immediately starts yelling again and thumping with no real aim at the intruder’s head and shoulders.

“ _Stop that!”_ The stranger commands, flustered and furious.

Hinata does not relent, and then the man’s other hand manages to capture his and he finds himself trapped with both his arms in the stranger’s strong grip.

“Please don’t kill me!” Hinata squeaks out, starting to feel terror start to seize him again.

“I’m not going to _kill you_ , dumbass,” the man says indignantly, as though Hinata has said something monumentally stupid.

“Then why are you in my bed?” Hinata demands, still high pitched, and feeling light headed from how fast his heart is fluttering in his chest. “In my _bed?_ _Naked?_ ”

A wash of pink spreads across the man’s cheekbones and his expression twists into one of deep irritation and intense embarrassment. “I...” he starts, before breaking off and frowning mightily, as though struggling for words. “I’m the cat!” He bursts out eventually.

Hinata boggles at him, slumping a little in the stranger's grip as intense confusion grips at him.

He's the _what?_


	4. Chapter Four

_"Way down deep, we're all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them." - Jim Davis_

* * *

“I’m the cat!”

“Huh?” Hinata’s voice peeps, deep confusion starting to war with his fright at this unexpected outburst.

“The cat!” The man repeats, still red in the face despite his scowl. “The black cat? The one who’s been here all this time?”

“Cat…?” Hinata parrots, and he feels a wash of heat spread from his toes to his head until it fades suddenly, leaving him feeling rather faint. In fact, his knees start to wobble too much to hold his weight and he’s just about aware of the man’s grip changing so he’s supporting his upper arms instead of gripping his wrists as he sinks back to the floor. He sucks hollow air through his mouth, feeling it rattle in his lungs as his legs fold underneath him.

Great, not only is there an intruder in his bed but he’s also apparently an insane stalker, or something, who knows that he’s recently adopted a cat. And where _is_ Tobiou, for that matter? If this lunatic has _done_ something to him, Hinata will-

“Hey, you alright?” The man’s voice sounds above him and Hinata blinks away the dark spots in his vision to tilt his gaze up, still feeling dizzy.

The stranger’s embarrassed flush has mostly eased, and the deep frown has rearranged itself from one of annoyance to appearing almost concerned.

 _Well at least he’s conscientious stalker,_ Hinata thinks deliriously, and he has to let his head droop again so he can focus on breathing and _not_ passing out there in his bedroom in front of an increasingly bizarre stranger who may still kill him despite his promises not to.

There’s a clucking sound and a rustle, both of which Hinata ignores as he tries to wrestle his lungs to follow basic instructions. It's followed by the soft thumps of footfalls across the wooden bedroom floor and a _fwump_ and then the man is sitting cross-legged in front of him, Hinata’s duvet swathed around him like a shawl.

Two large hands plant themselves on Hinata’s shoulders and Hinata’s head jerks up in surprise.

“Copy me,” the man instructs, tone leaving no room for argument, and then he sucks in a lungful of air.

Hinata blinks at him, his own lungs still stuttering away in his ribcage, until the man ticks his eyebrows at him, gaze piercing, and then he’s sucking in a lungful himself. It shakes its way in, in skips and jumps and isn’t as smooth, but Hinata holds it in like the stranger does, until they’re both releasing it.

For an indeterminate amount of time they both sit there, until Hinata’s juddering breaths start to match the strange man’s slow ins and outs. He has no idea why he’s doing this, doing breathing exercises with a naked stranger in his bedroom, and is still wondering whether he lost his mind somewhere between last night and this morning, but he can’t deny it’s helping him feel less faint.

Once his breathing regulates back to normal and Hinata can feel the fog starting lift from his mind, he sits up straighter, his back muscles twinging a little from the tense, hunched position he had been sitting in. The man’s hands fall away from his shoulders until they settle in the stranger’s lap, fingers twisting over themselves in a bizarre sign of nervousness.

“Who _are_ you?” Hinata tries again, voice level this time despite his still strangled tone. He’s starting to feel a bit calmer about the situation, now the stranger doesn’t seem to have any immediate violent intentions, though he’s still enormously confused and a little bit frightened.

“I’m… the cat,” the man says, looking deeply uncomfortable.

“What does that _mean?_ ” Hinata despairs.

The man shuffles in his spot. “I was the black cat. The one you’ve been feeding for the past few weeks.” He seems to take in Hinata’s baffled expression before sighing and continuing. “I know it sounds insane, but a while ago this bastard turned me into a cat – _let me finish_ – no I don’t know _how_ , magic or something? Anyway, I was that black cat that’s been here. The one… the one you saved last night, from the storm?”

Hinata boggles at him, re-opening his mouth from where he’d closed it when he’d tried to interrupt earlier. “You’re trying to tell me that you were _a cat_ and _not_ actually just a really weird stalker?”

The man squints at him. “How would I know about the rainstorm if I was a stalker? You really think anyone could follow you in _that?_ ”

_“I don’t know! But it sounds more believable to me!”_

The stranger huffs, but his face is starting to twist into something resembling distress now, and then he starts rambling. “You… you made me a bandana. From a Karasuno volleyball jersey. You fed me fish and chicken because you knew I didn’t like cat food. You let me watch you play volleyball in the gym. You didn’t kick me out even when I bit you – sorry about that I thought you were going to get my balls chopped off – and looked into that weird house because you knew it was important. You… you said… I could stay.” He finishes this last part around pursed lips, ducking his head down as a pout forms across his face.

Hinata blinks at the man in disbelief, mind whirling and spinning. There’s no way, no way at all, _anyone_ would know all of that. Even if this man had been staring at him through the windows every hour of the day and followed his every move, he couldn’t have _possibly_ known all of those details.

“You’re… Tobiou?” Hinata says, voice soft and thin and a curious mixture of dubious wonder.

The man’s eyes flick up to meet him from where they had been looking down at his lap and it’s only then Hinata notices their shade.

Deep, clear blue. And the shape around them has changed, more angular and set into a different face, but Hinata _knows_ those eyes.

His breath stills in his lungs as he shuffles forwards, tentatively reaching out until he’s cupping the man’s cheeks and the stranger lets him, surprisingly, with no more protest than the tilt of his brows. Hinata stares, long and hard, into those blue irises and sees all of the things he’s seen the past few weeks, eerily familiar. “Tobiou…?” He breathes.

“Isn’t that what I just said?” The man grumps, still frowning, but his shoulders slump in palpable relief.

Hinata lets go of his face and sits back. The last vestiges of panic and anger and horror start to fade away, confusion and befuddled acceptance settling in, as he gazes at the man before him that, not twelve hours ago, used to be a cat.

“Okay, you’ve got some explaining to do.”

The man – _Tobiou_ – huffs, raking a large hand through his hair. “I told you,” he says, with a peevish tone. “This four-eyed bastard turned into me into a cat.”

“That’s _not_ an explanation!” Hinata despairs, gesticulating wildly.

“Well I don’t have a _better_ one!” Tobiou says indignantly, folding his arms and scowling deeply, mouth pursed. It’s comically childish, for someone so big. “I was by the river when this guy comes up to me and says some stupid shit, then I passed out and when I woke up I was-“ He unfolds his arms to gesture to himself. “… A cat.”

“The river?” Hinata parrots, as a sliver of understanding comes to him. “By that creepy old house you’ve been so obsessed with?”

“I wasn’t _obsessed_ ,” Tobiou protests, fiddling with the duvet still wrapped around his shoulders. “But, yeah, that’s where the guy came from. I thought if I kept going back there I’d eventually catch him or something. But I got lost when I first transformed and couldn’t find it for days, until I was with you when you passed by it on your delivery route.”

“And you’d… do what?” Hinata asks. “Bite him on the ankle until he gave in and turned you back?”

Tobiou glares at him sharply, hands fisting in the duvet and he huffs, getting to his feet. “Whatever,” he grunts. “I still want answers, so… I’m going back.”

Hinata sits up a little sharper as the strange man starts to turn away, as though he was going to just waltz out of the door and into the street swathed in only bed covers. “What, _now?_ ” He squawks, scrambling to get to his feet himself.

Tobiou turns back towards him, face inscrutable, saying nothing. Hinata takes a step closer and has to crane his neck in order to peer up into those familiar blue eyes. It occurs to him then that Tobiou is _tall_. Hinata only just about reaches the other man’s shoulder.

When Tobiou offers nothing further Hinata rubs his palms across his face, pressing his fingers hard against his eyelids. He focuses on the pressure and the light starbursting across them, sucking in a breath as he tries to focus his windmilling mind. The man before him is claiming – quite convincingly, distressingly – that he used to be his cat, Tobiou. And that he got turned into a cat by a mysterious man from the, admittedly very spooky, old house by the river by what they can only both assume is magic, of all things. And now he wants to go _back_ there, to demand answers.

Not twelve hours ago was Hinata carrying a half-drowned cat back to his house in the midst of a thunderstorm, and now _this?_

Hinata groans, feeling a headache starting to press in against his temples when suddenly two rough fingers are gripping the skin of his exposed upper arm and pinching, _hard._

“Ow!” He hisses, lifting his face from his hands to glare up at Tobiou, who is blinking down at him with an almost startled expression. “ _What was that for?”_

“You’re supposed to pinch people when they think they’re dreaming,” Tobiou says diplomatically, shuffling on the spot and still frowning a little but at least looking a little sheepish.

“Thanks,” Hinata grumbles, rubbing at his arm to sooth away the sting. He won’t admit it, but it _had_ helped a little. At least to confirm that the man before him is definitely real, at least.

“So let me get this straight,” he says, planting his hands on his hips. “This weird, probably dangerous, guy turns you into a cat. And for whatever reason that… ‘magic’ has worn off now and you’re back to normal and you want to go _back?_ ”

Tobiou rubs the back of his head. “I want answers,” he supplies. “And also what if it isn’t permanent? What if I make it half way down the street and suddenly I’ve got four legs again?”

Hinata blinks up at him, unable to deny this logic and yet also struggling to accept it as reality. With a warbly, groaning noise, he flops to sit back on his bed, resting his elbows on his knees and his forehead on his heels of his palms. There’s a dip in the mattress as Tobiou sits beside him, tall and warm.

It’s silent for a moment, before a deep voice asks above him, “Are you okay?”

“Yep, just fine,” Hinata replies, high and thin. “Just questioning reality and everything I know about the world. Everything’s fine.”

A pause.

“Do you want me to pinch you again…?” Tobiou offers.

“No, no, no, I’m good,” Hinata says, reaching out blindly with one hand to pat at Tobiou’s bare knee. The skin beneath his hand is warm, and grounding. “Are _you_ okay?” He asks, after a moment, sitting upright to look questioningly at the man beside him, who is quirking a questioning eyebrow. “You were a _cat_ last night.”

“I… had time to get used to it,” Tobiou says, blue eyes flicking away to look at the floor. “I was one for a few days before I met you, so…” he trails off, eyes distant.

Hinata nudges him gently with an elbow. “And now?” He presses.

“And now… I’m back,” the other man says slowly, softly, and the seemingly permanent frown on his face finally eases, leaving him looking softer as the corners of his lips twitch up just slightly. Hinata’s heart squeezes at the sight.

“But I still want answers,” Tobiou finishes, the gentle expression vanishing for his frown once more.

Hinata sighs and plants his hands on his knees, standing up again. Tobiou blinks up at him from his spot on the bed. “Well, I’m going too then,” he declares, and the other man does a double take.

“You don’t-“ Tobiou starts to say, but Hinata cuts him off.

“What if he tries something again? You’ll need back-up, right?” Hinata says, trying to inject some positivity into his voice. “I’m not letting you go confront a mad man alone!”

Tobiou just blinks up at him, eyes wide.

“Even though I’m still not _entirely_ convinced you’re not a mad man yourself…” Hinata goes on, “I think if you _were_ going to kill me you would’ve done it by now, so… I guess I can go along with it.” He lets a wide, easy smile spread across his face as he offers out a hand. Tobiou stares down at it, uncomprehending. “I’m Hinata Shouyou.”

Tobiou’s eyes flick back up, confused. “I know…?”

Hinata waves the hand he’s holding out. “And you are…?” He prompts. “You have a real name, right?”

“Oh,” Tobiou says, jolting as the lightbulb finally switches on inside his brain. He reaches out with one large hand to hold Hinata’s – palm so big his fingers are brushing Hinata’s wrist. “Kageyama Tobio,” he says, a bit stiffly.

Hinata tilts his head, hand still firmly within… _Kageyama’s_ grasp. “Kageyama… Tobiou?” He repeats.

A swatch of pink ignites Kageyama’s cheeks. “ _Tobio_ ,” he corrects, lips pursing.

Hinata blinks once, then twice. “Wait, your name really is Tobio?” He asks in surprise, beaming in delight. “Wow, I can’t believe I got your name right! What are the chances?”

“You were pronouncing it wrong,” Kageyama mumbles, face crunching up into an embarrassed pout again.

“Potayto, potahto…” Hinata sing-songs, still grinning. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Kageyama,” he declares, squeezing the hand that’s still gripping his until the other man gets the hint and lets him go. “Maybe we should… find you something to wear…” he says vaguely, twisting away from Kageyama to look over at his closet with a thoughtful frown, wondering if he had anything that would fit a guy more than half a foot taller than himself.

“Tobio,” a deep voice says quietly behind him and Hinata glances back over with a confused hum as Kageyama is getting back to his feet, pulling the duvet tighter around himself.

“You’ve been basically calling me that the entire time anyway,” the other man points out, still a little red in the face. “So… Tobio is… fine,” he finishes, voice almost stuttering across the words.

Hinata dithers on the spot, surprised, before he smiles warmly, nodding. “Okay,” he agrees, easily, “now let’s see if we can find you something other your duvet toga. I don’t think my neighbours would appreciate seeing your butt this early in the morning.”

Tobio scowls, blush deepening once again, and he shoots out a foot to kick at Hinata’s ankle, who darts away with a yelp.

It takes a fair amount of rummaging, but after a few minutes, Hinata finally manages to produce a pair of sweat pants he thinks will probably fit. They’re old, and the elastic in the waistband is all but gone, so they shouldn’t be too tight. After a moment’s indecision, he reaches for the hem of the jumper he’s still wearing and tugs it over his head. Everything else is going to be smaller than this anyway.

 _“What are you doing?”_ Tobio squawks, immediately scrunching his eyes shut. His face is so red now Hinata’s a little concerned he might faint.

“This is only big thing I have!” He says defensively, feeling a little put out. How can Tobio stand there and be embarrassed by him being shirtless when the other man is literally _naked?_

Slightly red in the face himself, he shoves his jumper, sweat pants and a pair of fresh underwear in Tobio’s direction, pressing the bundle of fabric into his arms until the other man grabs it blindly.

“Do you remember where the bathroom is?” He asks, amusement fending off the slight annoyance as Tobio – still with his eyes closed – tries to navigate out of the room and not trip over the duvet cocooning him.

“Yes,” Tobio confirms, as he nearly bumps into the doorframe and Hinata has to bite hard on his bottom lip to fight back the snicker rising in his throat.

When Tobio finally leaves, Hinata takes a moment to just sink back onto his bed and stare aimlessly up the ceiling.

This was insane. This was absolutely, completely and utterly, _insane_ and, with another glance at the door, Hinata quickly pinches his thigh. The sting is both soothing and annoying and he rubs at his skin with a sharp hiss, still staring skyward.

Lost in his thoughts, circling the morning’s events over and over in his mind, it’s only when a blast of water echoes down the hall that he’s jerked back to reality and he starts to get dressed. He pulls on fresh clothes slowly, eyes drawn to the pile of fabric at the bottom of his still open closet. Dropping the sock he was about to pull on to the floor, Hinata lowers back down to his knees to brush his fingers over the layer of black fur still dusting his old Karasuno jersey, heart twinging.

A large part of him is suddenly incredibly heart sick – it feels as though Tobiou, a constant and endlessly endearing presence for the past few weeks, with all of his quirks, has just simply blinked from existence, and Hinata isn’t sure yet how he feels about it.

With a trembly sigh, he rises to his feet and yanks on the last sock, before making his way out of his room and down the hall.

Tobio the man is still in the bathroom when Hinata arrives, staring into the mirror attached to the wall cabinet. Seemingly unaware of his audience, the other man is tilting his head this way and that, examining himself at every possible angle. His face is a sweet mixture of surprise and joy, like a child with a new haircut who can’t believe how cool he looks.

Hinata leans against the bathroom doorframe, feeling a smile pull across his face unbidden. He can’t deny Tobio is oddly charming, especially standing there in a jumper that’s tight everywhere except across his shoulders and sweat pants that swing several inches above his ankles. Even though he finds himself missing his feline friend already, Hinata finds himself oddly pulled to Tobio. And he just can’t let the man in his house waltz away with nothing more than a set of borrowed clothes and a “thanks for the company.”

Across the room, Tobio twists to look down at his back and nearly jumps through the roof when he spots Hinata lurking in the doorway.

“Don’t worry, you don’t have a tail,” Hinata cackles.

It’s only through sheer reflexes that he manages to dodge the towel that Tobio flings at him in an embarrassed rage.

* * *

The walk to the river is, at best, awkward.

Hinata had already stuck his foot in it as soon as they’d left the house by immediately heading to his bike and mounting it, waiting for Tobiou to leap onto his shoulders out of sheer force of habit. It was only when Tobio the man cleared his throat after a stilted pause that Hinata jolted, staring at the other man in embarrassed surprise. At least Tobio had looked similarly uncomfortable, as though he was all too aware he had been wrapped around Hinata’s shoulders not two days ago.

“I don’t think I’ll fit,” Tobio had said when Hinata had loudly offered for the other man to balance on the back of the bike to diffuse the tension, and had eyed it (and Hinata) dubiously.

This was fair, Hinata had to concede, so he’d reluctantly dismounted and they’d headed down the street on foot. At least it had stopped raining at some point during the night, the world around them damp and shimmering with lingering puddles and clinging raindrops.

For Tobio, it was literally on foot. They’d both stared at Hinata’s collection of footwear (now down by one pair after he resigned himself to throwing out the trainers ruined by the thunderstorm rescue) before they came to the joint conclusion that nothing was going to fit.

“Your feet are tiny,” Tobio had said with a confused little frown, like he couldn’t comprehend how this was possible.

“Maybe you just have elephant feet,” Hinata had shot back hotly.

Hinata was privately a little concerned that going out in barefoot was perhaps not the best idea, especially after it had rained so hard, but Tobio had just shrugged and said he had grown used to not wearing any shoes recently so it wasn’t a problem.

As they walk down the streets, Tobio slightly ahead with his much longer legs, Hinata tries to take his mind off the silence by doing his best to stare at his companion discreetly.

Now out in the daylight, and with most of the shock from the morning having worn off (though Hinata did occasionally have to pinch his arm gently to remind himself it was all real), there was something about Tobio that seemed oddly… familiar.

And not in the sense he reminded him of his cat – although now Tobio’s face had settled into what seemed to be his neutral frowning resting face, _that_ similarity was almost startling – but like Hinata had seen him somewhere before.

He chews on the inside of his cheek in thought as he sifts through groups of people in his mind, trying to work out where the déjà vu was. He doesn’t think they share any classes at university, as Hinata is fairly friendly with most of his classmates, and equally he doesn’t remember him from Karasuno either. He entertains whether he might be an old regular for his deliveries but he scraps that too – most of his clients aren’t student aged. So… perhaps the volleyball club? Admittedly, Hinata’s not on the main team (not even a back bencher… stuck with a group of back-up-back-ups) but he doesn’t _think_ he recognises him from the university team…

“Are you okay?” Tobio asks again, and Hinata jolts in surprise, shaken from his thoughts.

“I… yes!” He blurts. “Why do you ask?”

“You were staring at me,” Tobio says, looking at him with a mixture of suspicion and possibly concern. “Is… the cat thing still bothering you?” He questions, voice a little quieter this time.

“Umm…” Hinata hums, thrown by this and now struggling with how to answer. “A little?” He says eventually and honestly. “It’s still a lot to process, to be honest.”

Tobio makes a strange sort of noise and turns his gaze away, staring steadfastly down the street. His stride picks up in speed, just a bit, his bare feet slapping against the cobbles.

“But not in a bad way!” Hinata hurries to add, and Tobio glances back over his shoulder at him, brows ticked up in question. “You seem pretty cool, creepy shape-shifting aside.”

Tobio snorts and turns his head back. “Thanks,” he grunts and Hinata grins.

He wants to ask Tobio more questions, but he figures now is probably not the time. His companion is clearly quite focused on his current task and Hinata thinks he’s possibly been through enough in the last day without having a bunch of personal questions thrown at him. So, he resigns himself to the silence, quietly trying to rack his brain for answers as they make their way back to the old house.

When they reach it, the river has shrunk considerably since the day before, almost back down to its usual width, though the water was still rushing by in a fast current. The old house still stands tall, seemingly undamaged and undeterred by the battering it was surely exposed to last night. The slope leading down hasn’t dried out back to its usual path either – remaining a boggy mire of mud and clumps of dead grass peeking out from pools of stagnant water.

Hinata’s nose wrinkles as his trainers sink deep into the mud, wondering vaguely how many pairs of shoes he was going to ruin this weekend alone.

Ahead, Tobio’s bare feet squelch as he slowly makes his way down the bank – arms held out wide for balance.

“Don’t slip,” Hinata warns him, eyeing the river down below with trepidation. If Tobio slipped all the way down and ended up in the water…

“I’m not going to slip,” Tobio snaps back peevishly, his face twisted up in disgust as his feet are buried in the swampy ground. “Ugh, this is gross.”

Hinata hums his agreement as they both steadily ease their way down. As the house looms closer, the mud recedes to be replaced with a low level of water that soaks the grass and bathes their feet. Easier to walk in, perhaps, but Hinata can’t suppress his whining groan as his feet are once again completely drenched.

They wade rather than walk up to the house, and Hinata is slightly relieved to see that the steps up to the porch, while damp, are high enough that they’re out of the swamp surrounding them.

Tobio shakes his legs a little, spraying away the bulk of the water and mud clinging to his feet, as he all but stomps up to the front door.

“Are you sure about this?” Hinata asks with a frown as he tries to peer through one of the windows, feeling nerves coil hot and tight in his belly. If what Tobio said was true, and if there was a guy here who could turn people in animals for seemingly no reason, then what else could he do? Was this safe? What if they got turned into beetles or something? What if they got turned into beetles and were _thrown into the river?_

“Maybe we should get back-up,” Hinata says nervously, taking a step back and rubbing an ever-so-slightly shaking hand through his hair.

Tobio doesn’t reply, just lifts a fist and bangs insistently on the door, and Hinata peeps out a squeak of shock.

“Open up!” Tobio bellows, thumping his fist against the wood, “I know you’re in there you stupid four-eyed bastard!” When there is no immediate reply, he gives the door a swift kick for good measure.

Hinata eyes the door from where he’d strategically placed himself behind Tobio’s larger frame, peering around the other man at the still silent house. “Maybe no-one’s in,” he says hopefully.

There’s a soft click and whistling _pop_ , and then the door starts to creak open and Hinata’s heart leaps into his throat, blocking the shriek that threatened to come out. Wildly, he wonders if he can reach his phone and punch in the police’s number from behind his back like they do on tv, when the door opens all the way to reveal a young man standing unimpressed in the doorway.

Hinata has half a second to brace himself for being turned into a beetle before Tobio is suddenly lurching forward in front of him and grabbing the stranger by the collar, lifting his fist up and dragging the man ever so slightly forward.

“ _You,”_ Tobio growls, eyes flashing and face twisted into a snarl.

“Ah,” the stranger says, in a bored tone of voice, “you’re back. Congratulations.”

A furious tinge darkens Tobio’s skin. “You bastard. You turn me into a cat and now all you do is just stand there say _‘congratulations’?”_ He snarls, words soaked in rage. He lifts his other fist and Hinata darts forward, alarmed, to grab onto his wrist.

“ _Easy,”_ he hisses, because if Tobio hits him then who knows what will happen?

Tobio whirls around to snap at him, though his anger is muted compared to the spitting fury he was aiming at the stranger, but Hinata ignores him. Still gripping tightly onto Tobio’s forearm, he stares, wide-eyed, at the man in the doorway.

“It’s _you!_ ” He says, surprise seeping into him like ice water.

The man turns his head to regard him with curious golden eyes, still being held at an angle by Tobio’s fist in his shirt. It’s the same young man from last night, the fair-haired, bespectacled stranger that appeared at the roadside and offered him an umbrella.

“You know him?” Tobio demands, his anger giving way to suspicion as he squints at Hinata.

Satisfied that his companion is not going to hit the blond man, Hinata lets go of Tobio’s wrist slowly. “Yeah…” he says, still looking wide-eyed at the strange man. “When I was carrying you home in the storm yesterday he popped out and gave me this huge umbrella to give us some shelter.”

Tobio regards him for a moment longer, before twisting his gaze back to the man he’s still holding. For a few long silent moments everyone just stands in their places, before Tobio eventually huffs and drops the stranger’s shirt, taking a disgruntled step back.

“Thanks,” the man says, not sounding very thankful at all, and brushes a dainty hand down his front to smooth out the creases in his clothing. “As I said - you’re back now, so why are you here?” He questions, tilting his head at Tobio, a ghost of a smile touching his lips.

Hinata frowns, uneasy again, as he flits his gaze between the two men.

“I want answers,” Tobio says, face crumpled into a fierce scowl.

The stranger quirks an eyebrow in apparent surprise before his sighs airily and turns on his heel, walking back into his house. “Come in, then,” he says, with an air of great resignation. “I’d rather be sitting down for this than standing out here in this musky air.”

Hinata and Tobio both stand there, looking equally unsure as the stranger disappears into the house, door left open.

“I think… if he was going to kill us, he would’ve done it last night,” Hinata stage whispers as he glances up at Tobio – who’s face is a complicated mixture of frustration and unease. “I mean, if he lives here he could’ve just thrown us into that river, right? And why give us an umbrella if he was evil?”

“I was _a cat_. For _weeks_ ,” Tobio hisses at him, but there’s no real heat behind it.

“And I think if you want answers, we’re gonna have to go in,” Hinata says, his wobbly voice betraying his nerves. Tobio scowls at him and he draws himself up straight, injecting brightness into his tone. “Well, after you!” And he pushes lightly at Tobio’s back, making the other man stumble forward a little.

Tobio huffs and hunches his shoulders, before taking in a deep breath and striding through the doorway and into the old house.

Hinata takes a moment to slip his phone out of his pocket and check his location is on in case this all goes terribly wrong, before sucking in his own fortifying breath and scuttling after his companion.

* * *

When they step over the threshold and into the house, the first thing that sticks out to Hinata is that everything looks… clean.

The décor is lush and from a time forgotten, fitting in with the western style of the exterior. It reminds Hinata a little of houses from old films and stories – dark wooden panelling and expensive furniture with paintings on the walls and antiques in cabinets. He blinks wide eyes as he takes it all in. He was _sure_ that all he could see through the windows when he looked through before was old sheets thrown over furniture and a thick layer of dust and cobwebs clinging to everything.

“Are you going to stand there gawping or come through?” The strange man asks from further down the hall, hands stuffed into his trouser pockets.

“Umm…” Hinata hesitates, looking down at his disgusting footwear and wondering what was more polite – taking them off or trying to scrape off the worst of the mud.

Tobio, however, seems to have no such concerns, and he strides down the hallway with purpose, uncaring if his feet leave behind soggy marks in the patterned rug stretching down the hall.

The stranger sighs and clucks his tongue, lifting one hand out of his pocket and clicking his fingers in an almost lazy way.

Instantly, it’s like Hinata’s shoes are fresh from the shop again – warm and clean and like new. His socks are even dry beneath and he curls his toes in wonder, unable to stop the cry of shock escaping him.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Tobio demands instantly, whirling to face him and looking alarmed.

Hinata waves frantically at his feet (noting vaguely that Tobio’s are still wet) and wheezes out, “my shoes!”

“I could leave you to develop trench foot, if you would prefer,” the stranger drawls.

“No, no, no, that’s great, this is great, thank-you!” Hinata babbles and he scampers down the hallway to join Tobio, whose face has eased from panic back to its usual disgruntlement. Together, they walk the length of it to follow the stranger, who ducks through the doorway at the end.

It opens out into a large room that resembles a curious mixture of a kitchen and a greenhouse. On one side is a traditional kitchen set up and on the other, as Hinata pans his view across, more and more plants appear. In pots and in hanging baskets and large, vine-like ones that cling to the walls and stretch across the glass ceiling. He recognises none of them, and notes that there are no flowers – just endless bunches of green in every shade, steadily getting denser until it culminates in what looks like a large fern-like bush on the opposite wall.

The room is warm, but not unpleasantly so, and smells of freshly tilled earth and curiously like strawberries. In the middle of it all is a large table, round and made of the same dark wood as the rest of the furniture, with a series of mismatched chairs encircling it.

The stranger sits in one of them and gestures for Hinata and Tobio to do the same. With a shared, nervous glance, they do so, sitting side-by-side and opposite the stranger.

“I assume you both drink tea?” The stranger asks, in the same disinterested tone. He doesn’t wait for either of them to reply, just leans back slightly in his chair and snaps his fingers again.

Hinata boggles as a brass teapot lifts itself from the stove, accompanied by three dainty, floral-patterned tea cups, and bobs its way through the air toward them, settling in the middle of the table. The stranger reaches for the pot and pours out what appears to be freshly made tea into the cups, sending two of them scooting across the table toward Hinata and Tobio with a flick of his fingers.

Hinata stares down at his cup, freshly steaming and smelling delightful, with a mixture of awe and also fear. He reaches out blindly and grabs at Tobio’s trouser leg, twisting the fabric tightly in his grasp, sweat pricking out across his temple. “He made tea from a _floating teapot_ ,” he squeaks out to his companion, and wonders wildly if this floaty, shocked feeling is what having an out of body experience feels like.

“He turned me into a cat and _this_ is what does it for you?” Tobio grumbles back, but he’s eyeing his own cup with an equally pale face.

Swallowing thickly, Hinata wrenches his gaze from the tea to look up at the stranger, who is taking a dainty sip from his own cup. “Who are you?” He asks, voice tight.

The man brings his cup down slowly. “I’m Tsukishima,” he says, and offers nothing further.

“Oh,” Hinata says, voice wobbly, “I’m Hinata-“

“Shouyou. Yes, I know,” the man finishes, sounding uninterested.

“Oh good. He knows who I am,” Hinata says, high and delirious, and he feels a large hand settle over his where his fingers are still twisted in Tobio’s trouser leg.

“You’re not answering the question,” Tobio says, eyes dark and stormy despite his still pale face.

The man – Tsukishima – raises golden eyes to regard him. “I’m a witch,” he elaborates, which about sums it up, Hinata supposes.

Fuelled by nerves and the desperate need to ward off yet another panic attack, Hinata grabs for his tea cup and raises it with a trembling hand to gulp down a mouthful.

“Don’t _drink_ that, you idiot! What if it’s poisoned?” Tobio hisses at him, lifting the hand he was covering Hinata’s with to wrench the tea cup away and plonk it down on the table top with enough force that splashes of tea launch from it.

“I panicked,” Hinata croaks out, and sits there frozen as he waits for the inevitable stomach pains or the choking to start. But after a few silent moments nothing happens, and Hinata blows out a relieved breath. Once the initial terror had worn off, he can admit the tea was actually rather nice – just as he likes it served, and there’s an oddly comforting warmth spreading through him.

Tobio continues to eye him suspiciously until he’s satisfied Hinata is not immediately dying, eventually settling back into his seat and turning his gaze back onto Tsukishima.

“Why did you turn me into a cat?” He demands, voice low.

Tsukishima quirks an eyebrow at him, and the corner of his mouth lifts in a smirk so smarmy it’s almost condescending. “Personal amusement,” he says. “It _was_ very funny.”

Hinata jolts in his seat, as taken aback by that statement as Tobio seems to be. Across the table Tsukishima huffs a gentle sort-of-laugh and raises his teacup to his lips, still smirking, and a flicker of anger ignites in Hinata’s chest.

Next to him, Tobio seems frozen, be it in shock or fury, Hinata doesn’t know. So he takes the initiative himself and launches from his seat, slamming his hands down on the table. The force of it seems to startle the witch, who nearly spills his tea and stares at him from over the rim of the cup with wide eyes.

“You transform people into animals because it’s _funny?_ ” Hinata demands, glaring hotly at Tsukishima. He can feel himself start to shake as the implications of this set in. “People have _lives_ you prick! You think you can put them all on pause for who knows how long just because you think it’s _funny?_ What the hell is _wrong_ with you?” Across the table, Tsukishima looks shocked at this outburst.

Hinata feels a large hand entangle itself in the back of his shirt and tug and he spares Tobio – who is looking at him with wide eyes and expression he cannot discern – a brief glance before redirecting his stare back at Tsukishima, ignoring his companion’s urges to sit back down.

“Well that’s not the only reason, of course,” the witch says, once he’s composed himself, setting his cup back down. “I just find it’s the easiest way to get people to learn their lessons. Which you seem to have done far better than I ever thought you would, Your Grace.” He says this last part with condescending praise, shooting Tobio a lazy smile. “The added humour of seeing you as a cat is only an added bonus, really.”

Tobio’s face contorts back into a snarl, and he yanks hard enough on Hinata’s shirt that he has no option but to collapse back down into his seat. Tobio releases his grip but doesn’t move his hand – a sturdy presence at Hinata’s back. He looks like he wants to retort, but no words are coming out, his skin slowly flushing with anger or humiliation, or perhaps both.

“What do you mean by a ‘lesson’?” Hinata presses, still cross but feeling a bit less like he wants to launch over the table and hit the witch over the head with his brass teapot.

Tsukishima sighs and leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “As you can see, I have magic,” he waves one hand vaguely at their surroundings before bringing it back to rest against the other one. “And having magic can’t go unregulated. In order to stop people from going… _rogue_ , I suppose, there are ‘rules’ to keep your abilities. And one of those rules is that we all must complete a certain number of ‘good deeds’ every few years so that we… give back to society, if you will,” he explains, sounding bored.

Hinata has to blink a few times to stop his mind spiralling away at the thought of there being even _more_ witches beside the one whose house he was sitting in.

“Good deeds?” Tobio prompts next to him, voice dark.

“Hmmm,” Tsukishima hums. “You were my ‘good deed’. Although…” he shifts his gaze over to Hinata. "It seems I’ve aided you both, so that’s two strikes for me. I really should be thanking you, this gets my superior off my back for quite a while.”

“How the fuck is turning me into a cat to teach me a lesson a _good deed?”_ Tobio contests hotly, leaning across the table and glaring furiously.

Tsukishima eyes him with an unblinking golden stare. “I explained to you exactly what you had to learn when I turned you. What you had to do in order to return. The fact that you’re sitting here now means you’ve learned that lesson.”

Tobio jaw slams closed so hard Hinata can hear his teeth clack together next to him. His companion’s hand leaves his back in favour of scrunching both of his hands into fists against his knees.

“It was an important lesson to learn, and I’m sure now you’ve managed it, you’ll be all the better for it,” Tsukishima continues, tapping his index fingers together. The earlier smarm is gone, replaced by cold seriousness. “And you needn’t worry about life’s little details while you were… _away_. I may not like doing more than I absolutely have to, but I’m not lazy. I ensured all paperwork needed to restart your year at university was submitted - including the application to the volleyball club - on time. I also kept tabs on your roommate, not that he spoke a word to me, so that you wouldn’t be reported a missing person. If your lease has ended, I presume your belongings will be at the local storage facilities. I did leave instructions should you not return beforehand.”

Tsukishima folds his fingers over themselves and rests his hands on the table, leaning forward. “Did I miss anything?”

Tobio sits in his seat in silence, face slack, and the colour slowly bleeds away until he’s left pale and wide-eyed. “Why?” He croaks out finally.

The witch sighs and unfolds his hands. “You needed to learn to move on with your life,” he says slowly, lifting one hand. “I gave you your instructions, and ensured nothing would be amiss in the interim.” He lifts the other hand. “I turned you into a cat to ensure you learnt that lesson, and…” a smirk touches his lips again. “Also because it reminded me of my… ‘boss’. He does so remind me of cats. I wasn’t completely lying when I said ‘personal amusement’.”

Tobio says nothing to this, opting to stare holes into the table instead, and Hinata hovers next to him, unsure of what to say.

“What… lesson?” Hinata asks slowly, once the silence has gotten too oppressive to bear. His mind is spinning from the witch’s explanation, and he has no idea what to think of it. It sounds like Tsukishima intended to help Tobio – albeit in an absolutely ridiculous way – though seemingly only doing so under duress.

Tsukishima eyes Tobio. “Do you want to tell him, Your Majesty, or should I?” He asks.

Tobio’s head shoots back up again, and he looks at Tsukishima wild and alarmed. Panicked blue eyes swivel over in Hinata’s direction – who tilts his head at him curiously – before he suddenly shoves his chair back and lurches to his feet.

“Hey! Tobio, wait!” Hinata calls as his companion turns on his heel and all but runs for the door, his still bare feet slapping against the wooden floor.

Hinata nearly trips over his own chair in his haste to get to his feet and follow after him. Without sparing a glance for the witch still seated, he stumbles after Tobio. As he rounds the doorway and into the long hall again, he just sees Tobio’s retreating back disappear behind the front door, which slams behind him in his wake with a crack.

Cursing, Hinata dashes after him, hands fumbling around the door handle before he manages to wrench it back open and step through. When he makes it back out onto the porch, he has to squint against the suddenly intensely bright sun beaming down from a perfectly blue sky above. Lifting a hand to shield his eyes, Hinata turns on the spot on the porch, now bone dry from the heat of sunlight, frantically trying to spot Tobio.

His companion is already halfway up the bank towards the old street with the crooked houses, and Hinata opens his mouth to holler after him when Tobio suddenly stops in his tracks before he can get a word out.

Tobio seems to hover in place for a moment, before he simply… _slumps_ to sit back down on the grass, facing the river. Hinata can just make out that he’s wrapped his arms around his knees and is sitting hunched and still, almost like he’s waiting.

Blowing out a relieved breath that his companion wasn’t going to continue to run away, Hinata starts to make his way back down the porch steps.

The grass surrounding Tsukishima’s old house, which is once again looking dilapidated and abandoned from the outside, is now dry. No signs of the large pools of water remain, and there isn’t even any mud. It’s just fresh, lush grass sweeping up from the river’s edge – now flowing quietly by once more – and up the bank, the old dirt path restored as well. There’s no evidence at all of the flood from the day previous.

The sound of the front door behind him opening and closing catches Hinata’s attention and he glances over his shoulder at Tsukishima, who steps out of his house with his hands in his pockets, gaze directed up at the hill at where Tobio was still sitting.

“Tsukishima?” Hinata asks, and he receives a quiet hum in response. “Did you really help Tobio?”

Golden eyes swivel down to regard him from the witch’s vantage point on his porch. There’s a long silence, broken only by the quiet gurgles of the river, before Tsukishima sighs, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “That’s up to him, I suppose,” he answers cryptically, sparing one more glance up at the man on the riverbank before turning to head back into his house.

“I’m sorry I didn’t return your umbrella,” Hinata says loudly as he starts to make his way towards the dirt path back up to Tobio. “Maybe next time!”

“Just keep it, I don’t like visitors,” Tsukishima calls after him and when Hinata looks behind him he thinks he sees a glimpse of a genuine smile on the witch’s face.

And then with a blink, he’s gone.


	5. Chapter Five

_"A cat has absolute emotional honesty. Human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not." - Ernest Hemingway_

* * *

When Hinata reaches the top of the hill where Tobio is still sitting, he flops down onto the grass next to him, flat on his back and gazes up at the sky. For the first time in days it was a perfectly clear blue as far the eye could see, not a cloud in sight. Hinata can’t actually remember the last time he got to lie down on soft grass and enjoy the simple pleasure of sunshine warm against his skin.

Beside him, Tobio makes no noise or movement - still curled up hunched around his knees, staring out towards the river, blue eyes distant.

“Are you okay?” Hinata asks gently, still staring up at the swath of blue above them.

Tobio’s answering sigh is almost lost to the rustle of the breeze. “Yeah,” he replies, quiet, and sort of hesitant, like he doesn’t really believe it. “I’m fine. Still pissed off, though.”

Hinata’s mouth ticks up in a smile. “Did you get your answers?” He asks, turning his head so he can look up at his companion’s profile.

Lifting his chin slightly from his kneecaps, a frown creases its way across Tobio’s face. “I suppose so,” he replies, voice surly. “Or about as much as I think I’m going to get that isn’t a riddle from that guy anyway.”

Hinata snorts a laugh and then silence settles back over them, awkward and oppressive. He wants to ask, badly, about what lesson it is that Tobio had to learn - does he really play volleyball too, what is he going to do now - so many things. There’s a seemingly never-ending list in Hinata’s mind but he can’t bring himself to ask any of it, because there’s something about Tobio’s silent scowling face that seems to be awfully sad.

The quiet stretches on for a while, broken only by the distant burbles of the river and the gentle whisper of the wind, until Hinata can stand it no longer and he blurts out, “so what now?”

“What do you mean ‘what now’?” Tobio asks, rolling his head so his cheek is resting on his forearms, and he frowns down at Hinata in confusion.

“Well, you’re human again, right? You’ve been a cat for like, a month, so there must be _something_ you want to do now you’re back,” Hinata says, raising himself up on his elbows so he can meet Tobio’s gaze better. “What did you miss the most?”

“Volleyball.”

The reply is instant, like it was a reflex.

Hinata bursts into a grin and sits up further, hands planted behind him on the grass, as he buzzes once again with the need to ask one thousand questions. He starts with the easiest. “Yeah? What position do you play?”

Tobio squints at him suspiciously over his forearms. “Setter…”

Brown eyes bug out as Hinata practically squawks in his excitement and he scrambles until he’s up on his knees, shuffling towards Tobio who leans back a bit in alarm. “You’re a _setter?_ ” He demands, absolutely thrilled. Oh this is great, this is _amazing_ \- maybe he can give Hinata some _tosses_ later.

Tobio opens his mouth to say something but before he can, Hinata reaches out and grasps his upper arms, leaning in close. Blue eyes widen but Tobio doesn’t move as Hinata scrutinises him.

The déjà vu feeling is back, tingling at the back of his mind like an itch Hinata can only just about reach. “I _know_ you, don’t I?” He says, soft and thoughtful as his eyes rake over Tobio’s bewildered face. He can see it, somewhere in the murk of his memory, just below the surface.

“We’re on the same university volleyball team, you absolute idiot. Well, _I_ am, I don’t know what _you’ve_ been doing-“ Tobio’s voice is rambling away, hot and blustery but Hinata ignores it because _yes_ , he’s already gathered they’re on the same team. On paper, anyway – Tobio is definitely not on the same roster of back-ups as Hinata is and he’s not a regular either, because Hinata watched all of the team’s games last year and he’s certain Tobio didn’t play in any of them. A bench warmer then, but there’s plenty of those and it still doesn’t really explain why he has definitely _seen_ Tobio somewhere before…

“You’re _that_ setter!” Hinata bursts as something pops in his memory and solidifies sharply in his mind’s eye. “You never play though... too new right? But you're that really good one! What was it, the king or something? King of the-“

“ _Don’t,”_ Tobio interrupts, voice suddenly panicked and sharp. He shakes his arms out of Hinata’s grasp forcibly and claps both his large hands over Hinata’s mouth, face pale and distressed.

Hinata freezes, and, slowly, his companion lowers his hands back down, embarrassment mingling with the panic. Then Tobio sort of… hovers in front of him, before he starts to crumple in on himself as the embarrassment deepens into what appears to be crippling humiliation.

The wind picks up gently around them, tussling their hair and pulling at their clothes. Hinata shivers slightly in the chill of the breeze and slowly, he moves, until he’s sitting pressed close next to Tobio, who has resumed trying to curl into a ball despite being well over six feet tall.

“Are you just trying to use me as a windbreaker?” Tobio grumbles into his arms where they’re back curled tightly around his long legs.

“Little bit,” Hinata admits, leaning in a little until they’re pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. Tobio doesn’t move away, and, encouraged, Hinata tilts his head closer so he can speak quietly without the wind snatching away his words. “Does this have something to do with whatever it was Tsukishima said you had to learn?” He asks, conspiratorially.

There’s a long few moments where Tobio says nothing at all, and Hinata worries briefly that he perhaps he’d overstepped when Tobio starts to speak – slowly, at first. Halting words and stilted sentences until he slowly builds momentum, stringing a story for Hinata while still safely cocooned in his ball.

Tobio tells him about middle school, about an upperclassmen he idolised and a team he never felt a part of. About how in his last year there was a rebellion at Kitagawa Daiichi, a universal declaration that they wouldn’t play with him anymore. About how from then on he was known as a king, tyrannical and lonely. About how he tried to get into Shiratorizawa, but couldn’t pass the exams, how he wanted to go to Karasuno for Old Coach Ukai but heard he’d passed away. About how he’d gone to Aoba Johsai instead, surrounded by people from middle school and a nickname that would never leave. About how he spent three years playing back-up to different setters, technically brilliant but with no-one to set for. About how he’d come here – a university with a good team and an easy to pass entrance exam, but still resigned to the bench once more, never to play in a real game.

Hinata sits in perfect silence through it all and says nothing, listening attentively even though he wants to protest at several points, wants to interrupt and speak up but he doesn’t. He gets the feeling that Tobio has been wanting to release all of this for a very long time now.

The story trails off and ends with a tremulous sigh, until Tobio finally lifts his head from his arms and slowly uncurls from his ball. As though seemingly drained of energy, he stretches out and flops back on the grass, ankles and wrists and a strip of abdomen bare and goose pimpled, peeking out from ill-fitting borrowed clothes.

“About two months ago, I failed the year,” Tobio goes on to say, voice slightly hoarse (he’s probably talked more in the last couple of hours than he has in a month, Hinata supposes.) “And I didn’t get invited to the training camp the team were holding over the break and when I found out I just… came here.”

Hinata wants to add that he too, failed his first year, and by virtue of not even being a back bencher he wasn’t even _briefly_ considered for the camp, but he keeps this to himself. Shuffling down, he stretches out beside Tobio, flat on his back across the grass once more, head turned towards the other man.

“Then that stupid wi – _Tsukishima_ – comes out of that house,” Tobio says and waves a hand in the vague direction of the building, scowling a little deeper. “Strolls over here, all _smug_ , and says all this stuff about…” He breaks off, swallowing thickly as though emotion had suddenly strangled his throat closed.

“Your ‘lesson’?” Hinata supplies encouragingly.

Tobio makes a strange noise, half sigh and half growl, and reaches up with one large hand to cover his face, pressing the pads of his fingers into his temples as though massaging away a headache. “At first I thought he was from university – some dick who never played volleyball but watched all the games anyway, just coming over to brag how much he knew about the sport without actually playing it,” he says into his palm. “He kept mentioning the, the _King_ thing, and how I needed to… to _trust_ someone,” he spits, face still covered. “I was so _angry_ I didn’t really hear the part about the cat thing all that clearly, and then I just sort of passed out I think. And when I woke up… you know the rest.”

When Tobio finishes he doesn’t make any effort to move his hand. In fact, he makes no effort to move at all, staying perfectly still as though he was bracing himself.

So Hinata rolls up onto his side and reaches out to gently pull at Tobio’s wrist until the other man reluctantly allows his hand to fall away from his face. It’s tight and drawn and resigned, like Hinata had already berated him and he was waiting for further fallout.

“You know, Coach told me something really important once,” Hinata says, and Tobio squints at him, wary. “He said volleyball was about ‘connecting’. And I don’t know about this ‘King’ thing or why it was bad – I think being called a king is _really_ _cool_ , actually – but I think maybe, _maybe,_ Tsukishima was trying to show you that.”

“By turning me into a cat?” Tobio says sourly.

“Well, as a cat, you had to learn to rely on other people, right?” Hinata suggests. “For all the basics, even food and shelter, because you couldn’t get any of those things on your own.”

Tobio’s expression shutters, going carefully blank. Hinata pauses and wets his lips, briefly worried he was overstepping before he notices how intense the other man’s gaze is still. It’s like Tobio is waiting, so he sucks in a breath and continues. “It’s like starting from the beginning, right? It’s like he said, you needed to move on, learn to connect. To trust someone.”

Something in Tobio’s face softens, and all of a sudden he looks so terribly vulnerable that Hinata finds himself dropping his voice down _so_ quiet, in case he spooks him away. “You trust me, right?”

“Maybe,” Tobio whispers back, and there’s the slightest hint of a tremor there.

“Then I think,” Hinata says, letting his voice steadily get a little louder and firmer, “what we need to do is go to the gym right now, because I really, _really_ want to hit your tosses.”

Blue eyes blink sharply and Tobio rears back a little across the grass, clearly taken back by this. “You… what?” He asks, eloquently.

Hinata grins, bright and sharp, and rolls to his feet in one swift movement. He bends down and holds out his hands as Tobio stares up at him from where he was still prone on the ground, eyes wide and bewildered. “If you’re here that means you passed Tsukishima’s test, right? So I think it’s high time we stop lying around on the grass moping about how we’re _not_ playing volleyball and go and _play some volleyball_.”

“I need shoes first,” Tobio blurts, still looking baffled. “And some clothes that actually fit.”

“Well you’re not going to find them lying around down there,” Hinata teases, and crooks his fingers invitingly. “Come _on,_ how long have you been waiting to set for someone, already?”

Those big blue eyes blink one more time before a fierce smirk splits across Tobio’s face, chasing away the frown lines and the vulnerability – sharp and hungry and something inside Hinata’s stomach curls up hot at the sight. The other man raises his arms and smacks his palms into Hinata’s, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.

“Right,” Hinata says, trying not to letting his building excitement send him buzzing away down the riverbank. “Where do you live?”

* * *

Turns out, Tobio only has a vague idea in which direction his flat is, so Hinata has to draw out his phone and put it into the maps function.

“How did you manage to end up by the river in the first place?” He wonders as they wander down the street, closer to the centre of town.

“I wasn’t really paying much attention at the time,” Tobio gripes by his side, scowling down at the floor.

Hinata glances up briefly from his phone screen to reply but then bites down the retort. Right. It was a bad day, Tobio had _just_ told him that.

Another awkward silence settles between them, not helped by the fact that now they were in a busier part of town, there were a lot more people around and some of them were not shy about staring at the tall young man in clothes two sizes too small and bare feet. Hinata lives in the quiet residential area, and in the month’s break since his first year at university had ended, he’d forgotten the amount of people that would be milling about in the town centre’s streets.

It’s not a particularly busy place, even in the heart of it, with only a meagre shopping district and a handful of restaurants scattered around the usual facilities of a mid-sized town. But in the suburbs just seeing one person down the street was a rarity, and Hinata winces as they pass by one teenager who fully turns around to gawp openly at Tobio’s admittedly rather strange outfit.

“Maybe you _should’ve_ brought the duvet…” He says, aiming to break the tension.

Tobio’s awkward frown eases into one of confusion. “Wouldn’t that be even weirder?”

“I don’t know, I feel like the _weirder_ you get the more people just want to ignore you?” Hinata replies, pocketing his phone when he notices his companion speed up and take charge of where they were going. Apparently he’s finally recognised where they are.

Tobio leads them down a street with a variety of buildings stretched along it, from fast food places to family shops to small businesses, until they reach a reasonably small apartment building. It’s fairly close to the university, Hinata realises, probably only about a fifteen minute walk, and he wonders if Tobio picked to live here purely for the convenience more than anything else.

When they enter, Tobio immediately heads for the stairs, in contrast to Hinata, who is heading for the reception desk.

“You haven’t got your key!” Hinata calls after him, grinning in amusement as Tobio freezes by the foot of the stairs and, looking both embarrassed and annoyed, turns stiffly to stomp over to join him by the desk.

After speaking to the slightly confused, but politely helpful, receptionist to see if they can borrow a spare, it turns out that Tobio’s lease has indeed expired. The taller man groans, dropping his head back and raising his gaze to the ceiling with a long, drawn-out sigh.

“I, umm, was told to give you this?” The receptionist says hopefully, rummaging around in the drawers of her desk before producing a small business card which she slides over the countertop. Tobio takes it with a slight tilt of his head. “A storage company came for your things when the lease ended, I think your roommate boxed some belongings for you? I’m not entirely sure, but I was told to give you this card if you came back. This is their address.”

Hinata peers over Tobio’s bicep at the card, scrunching his nose in thought as the tries to place the address printed on it. “I think I know where that is?” He offers, and is about to reach for his phone again, when the receptionist kindly points out it’s only a few streets away.

They take her neatly written instructions with gratitude and step back out onto the street. To Hinata’s slight surprise, Tobio doesn’t wait around or regard the building he’s lived in for the past year with any kind of lingering look or wistfulness. In fact, he doesn’t look back over his shoulder at all, he just strides down the road with purpose, pointedly ignoring anyone staring at his still bare feet.

“I’m sorry your lease ran out,” Hinata offers in lieu of anything more to say when he jogs to catch up, and Tobio grunts above him.

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to renew it anyway,” Tobio says nonchalantly, shrugging one shoulder. “The guy I lived with was planning on doing a study year abroad, so. I probably would’ve had to find somewhere else anyway.” He says this last part with a slightly lighter cadence, and Hinata tilts his head in thought.

“You won’t miss it at all? You were there for a _year_.”

“It was just a basic flat, and I wasn’t there that much. The guy I shared with spent all of his time holed up in his room so it was quiet, I guess, but it wasn’t anything, y’know,” Tobio reaches up to scuff his hand through his hair and rub the back of his neck. “Special.”

Hinata blinks in surprise at that. He finds his tongue has suddenly become thick and unwieldly in his mouth as he struggles to voice the next obvious question.

_What are you going to do now?_

It stands to reason, Hinata supposes, that Tobio will just find another flat and another roommate, and after today Hinata probably won’t see him at all. Not until the volleyball team try-outs, and something dark and heavy and horrible curls up deep his gut at the thought and leaves him feeling vaguely ill.

“I think this is it,” Tobio interrupts Hinata’s slowly spiralling thoughts, as they stop outside a small storage centre.

It doesn’t take long for an employee to show them to the container where Tobio’s things have been stored. It’s just a small one, and when Tobio lifts the door up there’s only about six boxes stacked on top of each other in the space. Hinata helps him drag them out – only a few are heavy, and Tobio reaches for one of them after checking the label on top.

After pawing about inside for a bit, he makes a small triumphant noise and holds up a pair of gleaming black volleyball shoes. They’re a nicer brand than the ones Hinata owns, and clearly well cared for. He’s about to protest Tobio wearing them all the way back to the gym - because scuffing them would honestly be some sort of volleyball tragedy - when thankfully Tobio sets them gently to the side himself and starts rooting around in the box again.

It takes a fair amount of digging in at least two boxes, but eventually Tobio manages to produce what Hinata guesses are what he thinks are the essentials: the volleyball shoes, an actual pair of trainers, two mis-matched socks, a t-shirt with some sort of logo that Hinata can’t read where it’s folded, a pair of shorts, a sports bag, his phone and what he presumes is its charger, and bizarrely, his wallet.

“Shouldn't those have been with you when you went to the river? How did they end up in here?” Hinata questions, pointing at Tobio’s phone and wallet. “More of Tsukishima’s creepy magic?”

“Do we have to talk about _him_?” Tobio complains. “And, no, I’m pretty sure I remember leaving them behind at the flat the day I went to the river. I think I just grabbed my keys and left, so I guess my roommate packed them up.”

Something about that pings a little alarm in Hinata’s brain. “He wasn’t worried when you just _left_ and didn’t come back for your phone and wallet for _weeks?_ ” He asks, a frown creasing his brow mightily. He’s never even met the guy and already he’s not feeling all that fond of him.

“We barely spoke,” Tobio says, not looking bothered by this at all. “As I said, he was in his room all the time so he probably didn’t even notice if I was there or not. And I think the witch – _Tsukishima -_ said he was keeping tabs or something on him, anyway, right? Some bullshit about ensuring I wasn’t reported missing or whatever. It’s not like it matters now, anyway.”

Tobio’s tone is brusque and matter of fact, and Hinata can see his point, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. He hums unhappily in reply and he’s still scowling when Tobio finishes stuffing his things into the sports bag, and when Hinata raises his head once he finishes tidying the boxes back up he finds Tobio staring at him with a curious expression on his face. “What?”

“… Nothing,” Tobio says after a very long pause, the strange look on his face still remaining. “Are we going or not?”

“What about all of this stuff?” Hinata points out, waving a hand at the boxes.

Tobio dithers, staring at the mini box mountain as though it’s only just occurred to him that he is, technically, homeless at the moment. And that all of his possessions are currently in six large cardboard boxes in a little warehouse whose storage fee may or may not be paid for.

“Why don’t…” Hinata starts, then breaks off. Blue eyes flick back over to him, bright in their curiosity, and it reminds Hinata so sharply of _Tobiou_ that he sucks in a startled breath. Steadying his courage and willing his heart to not beat quite so fast, Hinata blurts, “why don’t you just live with me?”

Tobio blinks in apparent surprise, eyes wide and round. “With you?” He repeats, and to Hinata’s immense relief he only sounds a little taken aback, and maybe a little hopeful, and not at all scornful like Hinata was worried he would.

“I mean, you basically _have_ for the past month but what about if you did… properly? It’s a big enough house,” Hinata continues, and he has to stuff his hands into his pockets to hide his nervous fingers and attempt to look casual about it all. He doesn’t feel it – his heart is thundering in his chest so loudly it’s a wonder it can’t be heard echoing in the warehouse, and his skin feels clammy and prickly as his nerves spark and tingle.

It could very well be the intense need to just not go back to his house after today and have it be empty all over again, save for himself. Maybe he had gotten so used to Tobiou’s presence that he was now ruined for solo living, but all he knows is that he never wants to go home to an empty house again. But maybe it’s even more than that, and maybe it’s because he can’t help but find Tobio intriguing and interesting and sort of _fun_ , under the grumpy face and the layer of stilted awkwardness.

Maybe he just isn’t ready to let Tobio out of his life quite yet.

“I can?” Tobio asks eventually, voice the softest it’s been all day, quiet and strangely gentle. “Stay?”

“Yeah,” Hinata says, allowing an easy grin to spread over his face as relief chases away his nerves and sends happy thrums of warmth through him. “Yeah, of course you can. If you want.”

Tobio fiddles with the strap of his sports bag, and for a long moment he just stands there, looking wide-eyed and wondrous and somehow a lot younger, all of a sudden. It makes something in Hinata’s chest squeeze tight. “Okay,” he agrees, once he melts out of his frozen stance. He doesn’t quite smile back at Hinata’s wide and blinding grin, but instead his face simply… brightens. As though someone had smoothed all the lines away and allowed something earnest and happy to shine through instead.

Hinata’s chest squeezes just a little tighter as they head back to the entrance.

It seems Tsukishima, for all of his meddling, does seem to at least make good on his promises of not being lazy. Whether it’s through legitimate means or by magic, Hinata will probably never know, but the employees at the storage warehouse reassure them that the bill for storing Tobio’s things was already settled, along with the payment for a courier to take them to wherever they need it to go. Tobio still looks a little constipated about it, like he’s torn between being relieved he has nothing to pay and annoyed that the witch has actually done something objectively helpful.

Hinata gives the employee his address while struggling to hide his smirk at Tobio’s obvious inner conflict. After settling on a delivery time for the rest of Tobio’s belongings, he gives his new roommate a little shove in the direction of the door, more than just a little eager to finally, _finally_ play.

* * *

“ _Uwaaaaah!”_ Hinata breathes – borderline squawks, really – as he lands from his jump, staring at his palm in wonder, reddened from the force of his spike. “Tobio!” He calls, whirling around to face his friend, who already looked shocked and now actively startles when Hinata all but shoves his hand in his face. “Your sets are so good!”

“I…” Tobio starts, blinking round, wide blue eyes, seemingly surprised into silence. Then he seems to reboot up all at once, cheeks flaring red as he grips Hinata’s wrist and shoves his hand down and away from his face. “Why the hell aren’t you on the main team? What have you been _doing?_ ” He shouts, really, actually _shouts_ , at a volume where some of the other people in the gym with them turn to give them curious looks.

Hinata ignores them, feeling indignation boil up hot inside. “ _Excuse me_?” He snarls, letting his own voice climb up loud, “I’ve been doing plenty! You’ve been here a month, already, were you just not paying attention or what?”

Perhaps it’s Hinata’s responding shout but Tobio’s whole body just… jerks. A full judder from head to toe and he _stops._ Freezes in place with his face stuck in a weird mix of frustration and possibly panic. Hinata frowns at the sight, feeling his initial annoyance drain away completely in favour of concern. He opens his mouth, the first syllable of Tobio’s name on his tongue when the man in question heaves out a huge sigh and melts from his frozen stance.

Running his hands through his hair, Tobio grunts out, “No. That’s not- that’s _not_ what I mean,” he says, voice tight with frustration. “It’s just… I don’t understand. You can jump _that_ high and you have all these reflexes and such an excellent control of what you’re doing. I don’t understand why you’re still stuck with all the people on the sidelines.”

“… Oh,” Hinata squeaks out, so completely thrown by this he has no idea how to respond. Distantly, his body thrums happily with what he assumes was genuine praise, under all of Tobio’s ranting, but, honestly, the man has a point. The university’s volleyball team is popular, so much so that there’s a wealth of players good enough to make regular. Most of the starting players are older than they are, and the back benchers are all talented and skilled. In contrast, the team of ‘back-up-back-ups’ that Hinata is stuck with ranges from people who are just there for social exercise, to people who could probably be better but were lazy, to people like him who earnestly tried but just fell short of the mark, for one reason or another. To still be in that group of people, despite how _hard_ he’s trying is…

Hinata lets his gaze drop to the floor, where their shoes meet the hardwood. He keeps some stuff in a locker at the gym just in case he doesn’t have time to go home first – spare kneepads, shorts, t-shirt, towel… but he only has one pair of volleyball shoes. Standing there, in his usual trainers opposite Tobio’s gleaming black pair of _proper_ shoes, he feels frustration and jealousy coil hot in his gut.

“When I tried out, they actually wanted me to go for libero,” Hinata says, voice low. “It didn’t matter what I’d done in high school, or hadn’t done, I guess. They just saw a guy who’s short but is fast, and said ‘hey, be a libero!’ And it’s not like I don’t love doing receives or anything, it’s just…”

“You want to fly,” Tobio finishes for him, and when Hinata raises his gaze, the blue eyes looking back at him are gentle now, and knowing.

Something tugs at his memory – a whisper of a scene during an evening watching professionals on television and admitting to a black cat that he wanted to soar.

Apparently, the cat remembered.

“I want to fly,” Hinata confirms, determination steeling his tone.

Tobio nods, once. “Okay. Then when we go for try-outs next week, you’re going to fly,” he states, as though were as simple as that. “But first, you’ve got a lot of shit to work on.”

“So do you with your _manners_ ,” Hinata gripes, but he’s grinning, bright and fierce. He reaches for a stray ball rolling around by their feet and spins it between his palms, feeling the heady thrill of having a real, actual setter being _right there_ to play with him for as long as he wants fill him up. It’s like he’s about to burst with the joy of it.

He meets Tobio’s eye, who's smirking back and looking just as excited, and throws the ball up, ready to be set.

The times slips away easily, until their play is broken only by the sudden and urgent need to eat and drink something in the middle, and then Tobio’s all but shoving Hinata out of the exercise courts to the showers.

“You’re getting sloppy, you’re tired,” the other man states when Hinata protests loudly, but still allows himself to be bullied into cooldown stretches when he’s fresh out of the shower.

“Well, whose fault is that,” Hinata mumbles to the floor as Tobio presses down on his shoulders, helping him to stretch out his back muscles. Normally, he wouldn’t be tired at all, but he supposes he has walked the length and breadth of the whole town today, plus what with everything that’s happened…

Perhaps it’s not that odd he’s feeling so worn.

They both finishes their stretches in silence, the first comfortable one of the day, and after storing his things back in his locker and waiting for Tobio to finish packing his bag, they leave for home.

By the time they make it back, Hinata honestly feels ready to drop.

He can’t stop the enormous yawn that wrenches its way out of him as they cross the threshold into his house, stumbling into the walls of the hallway as he toes off his shoes. Rubbing his face with both hands, he all but slouches down the hall, an oddly quiet Tobio following in his wake, until he reaches the kitchen, fully intent on making some tea.

Normal tea. Into his normal mug from his normal teapot that didn’t float.

Hinata groans and thunks his forehead against one of the cabinets. _God_ , what a day.

“Err, are you okay?” Tobio questions from somewhere behind him, and when Hinata glances over his shoulder he finds his friend standing awkwardly in the doorway, as though unsure of what to do.

“It’s been a long day,” Hinata says honestly, but he shoots Tobio a bright smile when the other man starts to look even more uncomfortable in reassurance. It hadn’t been a _bad_ day, after all, but after a daring riverside rescue yesterday, and everything that had happened in the hours earlier, Hinata feels truly and utterly exhausted.

Tobio makes a sort of agreeable grunting noise in his throat, but otherwise stays where he is - lurking in the doorway.

“What are you doing?” Hinata asks him, amused. “Just… make yourself at home. You didn’t have any trouble before,” He adds, grinning cheekily.

Tobio jolts, looking embarrassed very briefly, before he seems to settle, just a bit, and strides into the kitchen. Hinata finishes brewing and pouring his tea, watching his friend out of the corner of his eye as the other man rummages around for a glass before simply opening the fridge door and pouring himself a large helping of milk.

Hinata quirks an eyebrow but doesn’t comment. Not his go-to choice for a drink, especially after a work-out, but everyone is different he supposes. Maybe Tobio just got used to it after the whole cat thing.

At the thought, Hinata takes a large gulp of own tea, a little too fast perhaps, the heat of it sending tears springing to the corner of his eyes, and he makes his way to the living room. Tobio, after finishing his milk, once again follows after him, and together they both sink onto the sofa cushions. Outside, the setting sun bathes the room in a warm, orange glow, which begins to shift and morph as fat drops of rain start to hit the window panes, trickles of water oozing down the glass and refracting the light.

“So much for the rain stopping,” Hinata grumbles into his tea, as the rain starts to fall in earnest, a gentle patter against the roof and the windows.

There’s a gentle huff beside him and he turns his head to look over at Tobio, who has his head tipped back so its resting on the cushions behind him, face tipped up to the ceiling. His profile is lit nicely by the evening sun, making him soft even with the slight tilt of his brows. The other man seems relatively content, staring off into the distance, and Hinata takes the opportunity to just… watch him, for a little bit.

Aside from the eyes, and the hair colour, he can’t see any _obvious_ similarities to the cat that had occupied the same space for the past four weeks, and his heart gives a little sad twinge. Until Tobio scrunches up his face into a small yawn, stretching out his legs across the floor with the force of it, and the whole manoeuvre is so subtlety _feline_ that Hinata has to hide his smile in his tea mug.

“Is this actually your house?” Tobio asks suddenly, once he’s resettled after his stretch.

The combination of the sudden, almost _rude_ , question and Tobio’s suspicious expression causes Hinata to snort loudly, and he has to put his tea down on the kotatsu table top before he spills any of it. “Yeah,” he confirms. “Why, whose did you think it was?”

“I don’t know… a rental? How are you affording it?” Tobio asks instead, still not looking convinced.

“It was my grandparents’. It’s all paid for, so it’s just the bills,” Hinata says. “Don’t worry, I didn’t invite you to live here because I owed hundreds of thousands in rent money or anything.”

Tobio looks a little poleaxed by this, seemingly unsure how to respond, when suddenly there’s a firm knock at the door that startles them both.

“That’ll be the storage guys with your stuff, I think,” Hinata muses, checking his watch.

“I’ll get it,” Tobio offers, getting to his feet. “Where should I…?”

“Anywhere, we can sort it all out later,” Hinata yawns back, reaching for his tea and taking another long sip. Drawing his feet up onto the cushions, he curls up against the arm of the sofa and lets his head loll against the back of it, taking slow drinks of tea. It isn’t long at all before he feels his eyelids start to droop. His whole body aches from the sheer amount of exercise he’s done in the past forty-eight hours. And along with everything he’s learned today, his head feeling heavy and full and stuffed with far too many things, it’s probably no surprise at all he’s this exhausted.

Just as he feels the ceramic of his mug start to slip slightly in his fingers, the weight leaves his hands entirely, as if someone had tugged it away. But there’s no time to give it any thought before sleep catches him and draws him under.

* * *

Hinata is awoken by someone nudging at his shoulder.

It starts off gentle at first – a light pressure that slowly rouses him, and then insistent, firm pushes when he just whines and shuffles rather than waking up all the way. “Gerroff…” he grumbles, wiggling until whoever it is stops shaking him. With a sleepy huff, he opens his eyes blearily to find a blue pair staring back at him, disconcertingly close.

Cursing, Hinata shoots upright on the sofa, staring wide-eyed at Tobio, who was still leaning over him, and starting to squint.

“I’m Tobio, I was the cat but now I’m a human again,” Tobio says, for some reason, speaking slowly like he was trying not to spook him. It might’ve been reassuring if it wasn’t for the suspicious frown crumpling his face.

Hinata has to bite down on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing. “I didn’t forget,” he says, mouth wobbling dangerously when Tobio’s face morphs into a confused pout.

“Oh. Okay. You looked surprised, so I wasn’t sure…” Tobio mumbles, slightly muffled by his pursed lips.

“Because you were like, two inches from my face you big idiot,” Hinata says, before promptly getting distracted by the scent of something delicious hitting his nostrils. “What’s that smell?” He demands, before Tobio can get annoyed.

“I made dinner,” Tobio offers. “I put the boxes in the spare room – I think it’s a spare room? There’s nothing in it. But, anyway, I put them in there and then I had nothing else to do, so…” Tobio shrugs, apparently aiming for casual but still looking a little awkward. It’s very endearing. “I made food.”

“Food sounds amazing,” Hinata says earnestly, now happily wide awake and feeling his stomach grumble in excited preparation.

Tobio makes a complicated face, full of things Hinata has no time to decipher before he spins on his heel and heads for the kitchen. Hinata has just sat up straight and lifted his arms up high to stretch out the stiffness in his muscles from sleeping in such an awkward position when Tobio’s back – holding two bowls and two pairs of chopsticks.

Hinata reaches up and takes his portion eagerly, peering into his bowl and immediately bursting into laughter.

“What?” Tobio says, sourly, scowling as he plonks down beside him.

“This is dinner?” Hinata asks, shoulders still shaking with his giggles as he gestures down at his bowl with his chopsticks. Tobio had apparently stuck to a very simple meal – rice with an egg on top.

“It was all you had in the kitchen!” Tobio blusters, looking incredibly annoyed. “If you don’t want it,” he threatens, shoving a mouthful of his own meal into his mouth vengefully. “I’ll have it.”

Hinata knows full well he has a lot more in his kitchen than just eggs and rice, but he chooses not to point it out. Tobio could very well just not be the most experienced cook, he has no way of knowing, and he _did_ make him dinner when he didn’t have to, so Hinata supposes he shouldn’t tease him too much. “I’m kidding,” he says, warmly, and starts tucking in. It’s simple, and not the most nutritious dinner, but it was warm and tasty and almost exactly how Hinata would make it himself. “Thank-you for the meal.”

Tobio grunts around the food in his mouth, seemingly appeased. It’s only when he’s finished and he puts the bowl and chopsticks down that he speaks again. “I just… saw you make it a few times, so,” he says, not meeting Hinata’s eyes and rubbing the back of his neck. “It seemed like a safe choice.”

“It’s my favourite, actually,” Hinata tells him, reaching over to collect Tobio’s bowl to carry both of them to the kitchen to wash up. Admittedly, Hinata only really made it as a side dish, or for a snack, and only for a meal when he was feeling very lazy. But the fact that Tobio had at least noticed he liked it sends such a pleasant warmth through him he can’t help but beam.

Tobio coughs, looking pleased with himself around the still lingering awkwardness.

They end up doing the dishes together – Hinata washing while Tobio dries.

“Why aren’t you freaking out?” Tobio asks, out of the blue, once he’s finished stacking everything on the draining board.

Hinata furrows his brow, confused, as he finishes drying his hands. “Freaking out?” He repeats.

“I mean, what with everything that happened today!” Tobio blurts out, looking suddenly jittery.

“I did freak out,” Hinata points out, still confused. “This morning remember?”

“And then you met a _witch_.”

“Hmmm, true, and he had a floating teapot,” Hinata muses, and he can’t help the bubble of laughter that rises up out of him at Tobio’s incredibly wide, incredulous eyes. He tosses the tea towel he was drying his hands with onto the counter and leans on it, giving Tobio a wide, easy smile. “I mean, don’t get me wrong - a part of me is still thinking this is all an elaborate dream and I’ll wake up tomorrow with everything how it was, with a this big greedy cat begging for breakfast.”

Tobio stares down at him quietly, looking like he was chewing on the inside of his lower lip. His cheekbones are dusted with pink – flushed from Hinata’s teasing. “And the rest of you?” He prompts, after a beat of silence.

“Thinks that although this is, quite frankly, the _weirdest_ thing that’s ever happened to me, it’s also probably the coolest?” Hinata says, honestly. And maybe it’s childish of him, but there’s something eternally exciting to know that magic was real, and like in the stories read to him as a child, it can lead you to someone special.

Tobio, once again, looks taken aback by this answer, before he settles into an expression that’s halfway between pleased and endearingly awkward. He nods his head a few times, almost business like, before clearing his throat and excusing himself with the need to get ready for bed.

Hinata watches him go, smile softened with fondness and sets about tidying away whatever mess was left around the house, switching off the lights, and then finally padding back to the bedroom to collect some pyjamas. It’s enroute to the bathroom that he bumps into Tobio again, who’s changed into sleep clothes himself, hanging around awkwardly in the hallway.

“You okay?” Hinata yawns as he tugs on the string to turn the bathroom light on.

“Don’t you have a… futon, or something?” Tobio asks after a short pause.

“Oh. Fuck,” Hinata says eloquently, and grips the string so tightly he almost plunges them both back into darkness again. “Err, no.”

“No?” Tobio repeats, starting to look very unimpressed.

“I don’t exactly get many visitors!” Hinata hisses at him. He sighs and dumps his pyjamas down on the floor so he can plant his hands on hips and think. In his rush to get Tobio to stay with him, he had completely forgotten the need to provide a second person with basic furniture, somewhere to sleep included. He winces as he thinks of all of Tobio’s things scattered around the bare floor in the empty spare room with nowhere to be.

“Well we can buy a bed,” he says, diplomatically. “I mean, I didn’t actually get your balls chopped off so I can chip in too with the money I was going to use for that.”

Tobio’s hand twitches violently at his side like he wanted to take a swipe at him. “That’s great, but it’s nearly ten at night,” he growls. “What about _now?”_

“Err, I’ll take the sofa, I guess?” Hinata suggests, tilting his head in thought and scuffing his hand through his hair. That seemed like the fair option – it was his fault Tobio had nowhere to sleep, so he should be the one to sleep on the sofa, and Tobio can have the bed. “You can have my bed for now.”

“I can’t just… take your bed,” Tobio protests, somehow seemingly more annoyed at this option.

“Well, I don’t think you’ll fit on the sofa so unless you _want_ to sleep on the floor, that’s my only suggestion!” Hinata says hotly. It pains him deeply to admit it, but with Tobio’s enviable long legs, he really does think his friend will be too tall to be able to sleep comfortably at all cramped up on his sofa. He hasn’t brought himself to ask for the exact number yet, but Hinata is pretty sure Tobio is well over six feet, and the sofa is definitely not _that_ long.

Tobio still looks unhappy, and like he very much wants to continue arguing, and Hinata is honestly too tired for it so he sighs. “Why don’t we just share?” He offers.

“The sofa?”

“The _bed_ , you giant doofus.”

“Will we fit?” Tobio wonders, after a brief wordless pause where he just gaped at Hinata with the lightest touch of pink across his cheekbones.

“We did this morning,” Hinata points out, fully on his way to becoming truly grumpy with how long this was taking. He just wants to go to sleep. His brief nap from earlier was nowhere near long enough.

“… Oh,” Tobio says, slowly, already back to looking awkward again.

“Just go get comfy,” Hinata sighs, making a little shooing motion with his hand. “I gotta get changed.”

“Right,” Tobio blurts, and then all but marches down the hall and out of sight.

Once Hinata’s finally gotten ready for bed and re-entered his room, yawning and scratching his stomach, Tobio is already there. Sitting upright on the side he was this morning, coincidentally the side Hinata doesn’t prefer, and picking lightly at the sheets but looking a bit less awkward. Hinata supposes that’s the tiredness catching up to him – his friend is starting to look as drawn and sleepy as he feels.

Clambering into bed, Hinata immediately switches off the bedside lamp and shuffles until he’s fully lying down. Next to him, there’s a rustle of sheets as Tobio copies him, until they’re both flat on their backs staring up at the ceiling.

Despite how exhausted Hinata feels, and how much his eyes are burning with the effort of staying open and his head feeling heavy and dull, he can’t quite seem to nod off. And when he glances over, the very slight shine of Tobio’s still open eyes confirms that his friend is having the same problem. So, with a very soft, sleepy sigh, he murmurs into the dark, “Can I ask you a question?”

Tobio lets out an intrigued hum, the pillow beneath his head crinkling as he turns to look at Hinata out of the corner of his eye.

“What were you _really_ going to do if Tsukishima actually opened the door when you went to his house? When you were…”

“A cat?” Tobio supplies, and Hinata makes an affirmative noise. “I… don’t know, really. All I knew is that that’s where he was, and he was the reason I was like that, so… It was all I could think to do, at the time,” he says, quiet and resigned. “I probably _would_ have bitten him, though,” he adds, as an afterthought, and Hinata giggles.

Silence settles over them once more, until Tobio breaks it, hesitant and almost shy, “Can I ask _you_ a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you mind?” Tobio asks, voice so quiet it was almost drowned out by the muffled rattle of the still falling rain on the roof above. “That I’m not a cat anymore?”

Hinata blinks and then rolls, until he’s on his side and facing Tobio properly. The other man stays on his back, head turned towards him, eyes serious and unblinking and still so vibrant even in the gloom. A part of Hinata will always miss the cat, he thinks, because his feline companion was so very different from a human one, even if the two are one and the same. But Tobio’s question is easy to answer, because although this situation is so strange, so beyond everything Hinata could have ever comprehended, it’s also so much _better_.

“No,” he whispers, “no, I don’t mind at all.”

He thinks he sees his friend’s mouth tilt up, just slightly, before finally his eyelids grow too heavy as sleep finally finds him.


	6. Chapter Six

_"The smallest feline is a masterpiece" - Leonardo da Vinci_

* * *

For the second day in a row, it’s not until sunlight starts creeping across his bedsheets, bathing his face and glows behind his eyelids that Hinata wakes up.

Yawning wide enough that his jaw cracks, Hinata snuffles sleepily into his pillow, pawing at his sleep-crusted eyes with an uncoordinated hand. Blinking them open, he huffs a small sigh and squints blearily across the sheets.

Tobio’s still sleep slackened face is the first thing he sees and Hinata’s immediate reaction, once his sleep-dulled senses have caught up, is to suck in a sharp breath and seize up in panic.

For a full minute Hinata lies there, frozen, until eventually the synapses start firing in his brain again and everything that happened yesterday shoots to the front of his memory.

He presses a long groan, croaky with sleep, into his pillow. Hopefully this won’t happen every morning, he muses, as he rolls onto his back and scrubs at his face with palms. He can’t almost have a heart attack every time he wakes up to find another man in his bed, he won’t make it until the end of the week.

Staring up at the ceiling, the events of yesterday play out in his mind slowly. It still feels like a dream – fantastical and bizarre and exciting – and Hinata is still struggling to wrap his mind fully around the concept of witches and magic hiding in the streets and how it really is possible for people to fall into your life as if out of a storybook.

There’s a sleepy noise next to him and Hinata turns his gaze to his bed mate, smirking when he notices the small line of drool down the other man’s cheek as he snores softly.

Either Tobio was just as exhausted from yesterday as he was, or he was a particularly heavy sleeper, but either way he doesn’t stir at all as Hinata eases himself from the bedsheets. Stretching out the stiffness in his muscles, Hinata pads around the side of the bed, silent as he can, to peer down at his slumbering friend.

He’s different like this, with the frown evened out and his face soft and open. For the first time, Hinata can take the time to appreciate his friend’s… _human_ features without worrying about Tobio noticing him staring. He’s pretty handsome, Hinata supposes, in that tall, dark and mysterious way that used to leave girls giggling in high school hallways and boys flustered and jealous. He finds himself drawn to his hair, in particular, glossy and smooth even when mused across the pillow and, unwittingly, he finds himself stretching his hand to see if it was as soft as Tobiou’s fur…

He catches himself just before his fingertips brush the strands and Hinata shakes himself bodily, trying to ignore the heat in his cheeks as he stalks stiffly from the room in the direction of the kitchen.

Unable to help his curiosity, he peeks into the spare room briefly on the way, only to find Tobio had simply unpacked what was necessary and left it all in little piles around the room. Hinata’s heart twinges a little. They really did need to make a trip to buy his friend some furniture as soon as they were able to at the weekend.

Curiosity sated, Hinata pads down the hall to the kitchen, and throws open the cupboards and the fridge to take stock of what he has on hand.

It’s something he’d discovered fairly recently, about half way through last year when his boss’s wife helped him with healthy recipes, but Hinata _loves_ to cook. Some days, he’s too tired to do more than heat up what he has left over, or too lazy to go all out, especially when it was always just himself day after day. Going from spending every meal time with a particularly loud and playful little sister and a joyful mother to nobody at all had been more than a little jarring.

(He hasn’t spoken to Natsu in a while actually… he should call her. Think of some excuse for how he’d somehow lost his new cat within a month.)

But now, there was someone else in the house, and if Tobio could make him dinner, even if it was just egg over rice, then he can make him breakfast. That’s only fair.

He’s just grilling the fish when there’s a noise behind him and, trying not to jump too obviously in the air in surprise, Hinata glances over his shoulder to find Tobio yawning in the doorway, scratching at his stomach sleepily. “Good morning!”

“Morning…” Tobio mumbles back, his already deep voice several octaves lower with the hangover of sleep. “What are you-“ he breaks off to yawn again, “what are you making?”

“Breakfast?” Hinata replies, amused.

Tobio makes an interested noise and seems to perk up, shuffling into the kitchen and peering around Hinata at the spread of food across the counter top. The eggs, rice and miso were already done, set to the side neatly while Hinata finished off the fish.

There’s a soft gurgling noise and Tobio looks down sharply, seemingly snapping to full awareness all at once as his stomach makes itself known.

Hinata bursts out laughing, waving his spatula at Tobio, who looks caught between being mildly embarrassed and still in rapture over the breakfast spread. “I’m nearly done, so go and carry that through. If you can manage to do that without eating it half way, that is,” he instructs, amused. Because apparently the human was just as enamoured with food as the cat.

“Shut up,” Tobio mutters back with no heat, scooping up some of the bowls. He’d have to make two trips, even with his massive hands.

His friend makes it half way across the kitchen before he stops suddenly and asks, “why haven’t you got a kitchen table?”

Hinata blinks, taken aback by this. Tobio’s tone wasn’t rude, or scornful, just curious, but it throws him all the same. “I uhh… didn’t really need one,” he says, turning back to the stove so he doesn’t have to meet Tobio’s eye. “It’s kind of lonely sitting at a table by yourself every day, so…” he breaks off to clear his throat, flipping the fish over in the pan.

He feels eyes staring into the back of his head, but he doesn’t turn, and then after a beat there’s Tobio’s soft footfalls again as he friend leaves the room with the breakfast dishes.

In truth, there was a table, when Hinata had first moved in. And even though he made friends at the university, the reality was that he simply lived too far into the suburbs for any frequent visitors, let alone dinner guests. Most students, if they weren’t from the town already, travelled in, or lived in the smattering of apartment blocks like Tobio had. In contrast, Hinata lives a fair distance away, and most of his neighbours are families or elderly. He doesn’t mind the distance, personally, it’s not all that much by bike and he likes the exercise, but it definitely added to the steady building feeling of isolation when no-one wanted to make the journey.

It didn't take long for him to donate the table to a nice lady down the street.

In the distance, the muffled sounds of the television being switched on jolt him from his reverie, just in time to serve up the fish. Tobio comes back as he’s plating them up, and they carry the remaining dishes between them to the living room.

“This is good,” Tobio says, around a mouthful of rice, once they’re both seated on the sofa and digging in after the briefest of ‘thank-you for the meal’s.

“Thanks,” Hinata grins, tingling happily at the praise. “Hey, do you have to go in today?”

Blue eyes blink at him, wide and confused, from over the top of the bowl.

“To college,” Hinata elaborates.

Tobio swallows slowly. “Oh,” he says, lowering his bowl and tapping his chopsticks against the edge thoughtfully. “What day is it?” He asks, after a long pause, frowning vaguely up at the ceiling.

“… Tuesday,” Hinata replies, after a beat. It feels later, what with everything that’s happened, like a whole week has passed since he was rushing out into a storm and not only two days.

“I… don’t know,” Tobio admits, once he’s had a moment to think. “That idiot Tsukishima said he filed all of my paperwork but there wasn’t anything in the boxes from the university yesterday.”

Hinata hums thoughtfully, tidying the scattered crockery on the kotatsu table top into a little pile idly. “Well, if you’re the same as me, then I don’t think you have a lot to do this week. It’s just the introduction week, which we’ve already done once – with the parties and the meet-and-greet things with the lecturers, remember?”

“Sort of,” Tobio grunts. “I didn’t really go to a lot of them. Only the volleyball one.”

“The only important one,” Hinata agrees solemnly. “I mean, I know I have to go in for a couple of faculty things this afternoon, and then I’m pretty sure the first volleyball club meeting is… Friday. But otherwise lectures don’t start until next week.”

“I might as well come with you,” Tobio sighs, rubbing a hand across his forehead. “I probably need to go the faculty office myself too, and I need… a timetable, at the very least.”

“Well, I hope you’re ready to leave early,” Hinata says, as he stands to collect his crockery tower. “If we’re not going by bike it’s a bit of a walk from here.”

“That’s fine, it’s not like I haven’t been doing a lot of running around recently anyway,” Tobio shrugs, joining Hinata in the kitchen to help wash up. There’s a slight hint of bitterness in his tone, but his face is mild, under the customary light frown.

“What was that like?” Hinata blurts, curious, as he fills the sink with hot water and washing up liquid. “Running around on four legs?”

Tobio tilts his head at this, staring off into the middle distance as he considers, absentmindedly dunking the dirty dishes into the sink. “Clumsy,” he says at last. “I kept forgetting I had extra feet at first. It didn’t take _that_ long to get used to it though, I suppose… it was almost like I already knew how to do it, I just needed to practice.” He stares at the suds bathing his hands and wrists as he scrubs the dishes and passes them to Hinata for drying. “It was kind of cool though, I guess, being able to run a lot faster. My balance was a lot better too.”

“So you don’t miss it?”

Tobio gives him a strange look. “Why would I miss it?”

“I don’t know! It sounds kind of cool, getting to be an animal for a bi-“ Hinata’s cut off by a soapy hand slapping over his mouth.

“Don’t _say_ things like that!” Tobio hisses at him, squinting over Hinata’s shoulder towards the kitchen windows. “Who knows if that guy is sneaking around outside and listening? Do you _want_ to give him ideas?”

Hinata bats his hand away with a splutter, rubbing away the lingering soap suds still stuck to his lips with the bottom of his sleep shirt. “ _Ugh,_ eww. And I think Tsukishima’s got better things to be doing right now than spy on us,” he says. “He’s got to give back to the community, right?”

Tobio grunts, looking entirely unconvinced.

With a cheeky grin, Hinata flicks the remaining suds at Tobio as the water in the sink drains away, cackling at the resulting cry of disgust and darts out of the room. “I’m having a shower!” He calls over his shoulder as Tobio curses darkly under his breath and scowls mightily – though the effect is somewhat ruined by the soap bubbles clinging to his hair.

* * *

“What’s that for?” Tobio asks when they leave the house a couple of hours later, pointing at the large umbrella in Hinata’s hand that Tsukishima had… _provided_ two days prior.

“When I said this was a walk, I meant it’s a _walk_ ,” Hinata replies with a pointed look, shouldering his bag and double checking the front door was locked. “I don’t want to get half way there or back and suddenly it starts raining again. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little sick of getting soaked.”

“Fair,” Tobio acquiesces, falling into step next to Hinata as they head down the road. “Where’d you get that anyway? I don’t remember seeing it.”

“Oh, you know… it was lying around,” Hinata says vaguely, because he suspects if he admits Tsukishima had given it to him Tobio was liable to snatch it away and throw it into one of the neighbour’s gardens, declaring it cursed. “Just one of those things you forget you have around the house, you know how it is… hey! What’s your course on, anyway?” He asks, deftly switching subjects when Tobio starts to squint at him suspiciously.

Luckily, the rain holds off, and Hinata has no need to open the umbrella he twirls absentmindedly as they stroll along in the early afternoon sunshine towards the town centre. The conversation is comfortable, even if Hinata feels he’s doing the bulk of the speaking, as they discuss their course choices. Or course changes, to be more precise, seeing as they both failed the first attempt.

“Did you bring your phone?” Hinata asks once they arrive at the main campus, shuffling them off to the side so they aren’t in the way of the constant stream of students and faculty alike.

“Yeah…”

“Okay, here, text me when you’re done and we’ll meet at the gym afterwards, okay?” He flips his phone around to show his number on the screen to Tobio, who dutifully taps it into his mobile.

The next few hours are a boring mishmash of meetings and lecturer meet-and-greets and course introductions, and when Hinata is finally given his finalised timetable and other documents, he all but snatches them away so he can dart off to freedom. He trots along the halls, checking his phone as he makes his way to the gym where he’d agreed to meet Tobio.

He’d already sent in his volleyball application, but it was good form at least to pop his head in and say hello to his upperclassmen who would be manning the stand at the gym. They were trying to lure in new recruits, but they didn’t really need to - the team was popular enough based on its reputation. (Much to the displeasure of the other sports teams who were littered around the gym space.)

Hinata’s phone beeps with an incoming message, signalling Tobio was done and already waiting. With a grin, he puts a burst of speed into his step.

“Wow, you’ve got a whole tree to take home,” Hinata comments ten minutes later when he skids to a halt outside of the gymnasium, boggling at the massive wad of paper in Tobio’s arms.

Tobio grunts his agreement, looking disgruntled. “Yeah. I didn’t know what they had tried to post and what I was supposed to pick up before, so I just got all of it.” He frowns down at the paper mountain in his arms. “But this seems excessive.”

“So much for paperless,” Hinata agrees, and he opens his bag in offering for Tobio to dump some of his papers in, which he does so with a murmured thanks.

“Kageyama! Nice to see you!” The new head of the volleyball team calls when they approach the stand after storing away Tobio’s ridiculous amount of paperwork.

“Honda-san, hello,” Tobio says, somewhat stiffly.

“And… Hinata! Huh, I didn’t know you two knew each other.”

Hinata smiles back, though it’s a little tight around the edges with his sudden nerves. “Hello Honda-san! And, oh… you know! We met during the school break! Complete coincidence, really, Tob- Kageyama just sort of dropped in one day!” He says, loud and a little thin, and he feels a large foot kick his ankle, hard, when he starts to giggle nervously. “ _Oww! Hey!”_

Their captain – last year’s vice – blinks at the two of them in confusion. “I… see. Well, it’s really nice to see the two of you. I heard about your final exams.”

Hinata winces, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Tobio do the same - once the warning glare he was shooting at him melted from his face.

“But it’s great you’re still here!” The captain continues. “We got your forms already, so I’m looking forward to your try outs this week. But, Hinata, are you sure you still want to go for wing spiker?”

“Yes,” Hinata replies, immediately and firmly, and he thinks he spots Tobio smirk in approval above him.

The captain blinks again, seemingly taken aback by this, but then he eases into a smile. “I look forward to seeing what you can do then,” he says, and nods at the two of them before turning his attention to a freshman who’s holding onto an application form.

“One day,” Hinata says, as they’re leaving the university campus, “people will stop questioning why I’m a spiker.”

Tobio shuffles his bag on his shoulder and looks down at him thoughtfully. “We better go to the gym then, there’s things to work on.”

“Hey! What does that mean?” Hinata demands, rapping Tsukishima’s umbrella over the back of his fiend’s knees, making him curse colourfully when they nearly buckle. He gives Tobio no time to reply, darting neatly away from the half-hearted kick that's aimed at him and striding off with purpose. “Well, we need to go home first anyway. I don’t have all my stuff with me, and I don’t think you do either, unless you’ve always got volleyball shoes in your bag, and also I need lunch.”

“Didn’t you just have breakfast?” Tobio grumbles, falling into step beside him as they return home.

(The thought still gives Hinata a giddy little thrill. Not only is there someone who wants to play volleyball with him, there’s also someone at home now. Every day, there will be always be someone at home.)

For two people who had gotten used to primarily their own company over the past year or so, living together turns out to be much smoother than Hinata thought it would be, like they both simply slotted into place around each other.

There’s the usual bumps of suddenly having another person in the house, of course (or in Tobio’s case, another person he actually _saw_.) There was bumping into each other in the hallway and remembering someone else could be in the bathroom at any moment and the awkward sharing of necessities like food and the television remote.

But maybe it was because Tobio had always been there, albeit in a slightly different way, and was aware of his habits or maybe it was because Hinata’s always thought of himself as a people person, but there’s almost no real issues at all.

He discovers, very early on, that once the awkwardness was stripped away and Tobio relaxed, there was a competitive monster lying underneath. And not just in volleyball, but for everything. It would be annoying, maybe, if Hinata wasn’t exactly the same. It’s childish and stupid, a lot of it, but it’s fun – from wrestling over who got to have more duvet to trying to share the same space for the bathroom mirror to whoever could leap into the shower first. There’s bickering too, tiny retorts back and forth and sometimes Tobio freezes a little, like he’s worried he’s overstepped the mark, but then Hinata starts laughing and the tension evaporates.

Almost everything ends in laughter or smiling or smirking, and Hinata finds that he loves it – having someone who pushes back as much as he does, and never is there any feelings hurt. He thinks Tobio feels the same, from the way his frown eases away completely sometimes, when they get heated about who can fry an egg quicker.

He finds out that Tobio likes to have a run every morning, once he’s finally roused himself (he’s always, without fail, still asleep when Hinata wakes up.) And although Hinata likes a run himself, he doesn’t often go for one, most of his exercise taken up by biking and gym sessions, but when Tobio asks if he wants to come with him, he immediately says yes.

The rain still falls, but mainly overnight now, which leaves the mornings damp and shining and fresh as the both of them pound the pavement in a loop around the neighbourhood. Tobio seems to have an easier time uphill, with his much longer legs, but then Hinata gains the upper hand down the slopes and the more level areas, his speed outpacing those long strides.

The first day, when they’re both trying to complete a jog without getting lost (Tobio) or veering off because he knew a better course (Hinata), they more or less stay beside each other the entire time. But the next morning, and every morning after, it’s like something ignited. An invisible gauntlet thrown. It starts with Tobio making it up the hill just outside Hinata’s house first, shooting a smirk over his shoulder, only for it to be wiped away when Hinata grunts and powers over the crest, past Tobio, so he can fly down the other side with abandon.

They keep to a jog for most of the route, because both of them like being ahead but neither of them are stupid enough to give themselves any kind of injury. But when they hit the final stretch it’s like someone had fired a starting gun. They both sprint for the door, and whoever was the least tired tends to win, and to whoever the victory goes to, so does the opportunity to crow.

(And then open the door hastily, before the neighbour over the road starts complaining they’re being too noisy.)

They eventually come to an agreement that if Tobio pays for the groceries, then Hinata will do the cooking and cover the rest of the bills. At first, Tobio argued vehemently this wasn’t equal, until Hinata threatened to pull up bank statements to prove how much he could spend on food usually. This way, Tobio could buy whatever they both wanted. Plus, he was thrilled to have the opportunity to cook properly every day, with an abundance of ingredients, and luckily Tobio wasn’t a fussy eater by any means.

Hinata learns that he drinks a lot more tea than Tobio does, but that they both prefer water when they were really thirsty. Unless it was first thing in the morning, or at lunch, when Tobio would rummage in the fridge for the milk and down a massive glass.

“So was the milk a thing before or after you were a cat?” He asks one morning over his tea mug, using the ceramic to hide his smirk.

Tobio doesn’t dignify that with a response, just flips him off as he stomps from the kitchen, drinking from his full glass of milk all the while.

The same evening, Hinata steals the rest of the milk for dinner while Tobio is in town finalising a few things at the university. He’s just serving up each portion into bowls when he hears the front door open and close and the muffled _“I’m home!”_ through the walls. “Welcome back!” He shouts in return, his mouth stretched into a silly grin.

Tobio rounds the corner into the kitchen, mouth pursed in a curious twist as he tries to use his considerable height advantage to peer around Hinata to see what was on the counter. “Is that curry?” He asks, hopefully.

“Yep!” Hinata confirms, scooping up both bowls and brandishing them at his friend until the other man gets the hint and shuffles out of the way so he can head into the living room.

Tobio follows after him, face bright and hopeful, and Hinata has to clamp down on his bottom lip to stop the giggles seeping out. Especially when the taller man plops down next to him on the sofa and accepts his own bowl with eager hands and shining wide eyes. He looks so much like when Hinata gave in to the cat and allowed him to have fish instead of pet food that Hinata’s heart twists up pleasantly in his chest.

“You always looked at my bowl like I hadn’t fed you in weeks whenever I made it,” Hinata explains when they start digging in.

Tobio lifts his head briefly to explain, mouth full and with grains of rice stuck to his cheeks, “curry is my favourite,” before he resumes enthusiastically shovelling it into his mouth.

“I thought as much,” Hinata says softly, smiling around his spoon.

Time passes like this, until in seemingly no time at all it was Friday morning and the two of them were getting one last practice session in before the try outs later that day.

“Hey,” Hinata calls as he idly spins a ball on his knuckle. “Are you nervous?”

“No,” Tobio says, immediately, before he frowns down at the water bottle he was drinking from. “Not to play volleyball, anyway.”

Hinata, who had been about to launch the ball he was playing with at his friend’s head at his audacious display of confidence, pauses. “For the answer?” He clarifies.

Tobio hums, seemingly getting stuck in thought, and Hinata looks down at the ball on his finger until it spins out of orbit, catching it easily with his other hand as it starts to fall. “I get it. I don’t want to spend another second not getting to play in any games,” he says, aiming his voice down at the blue and yellow swirls in hands. “But I think… with your sets, we can make it.”

There’s the squeak of shoes across polished wood and then Tobio’s standing in front of him, tugging the ball from his hands. “Don’t miss them,” is all he says.

“When have I ever missed them?” Hinata challenges, and matches Tobio’s answering smirk.

Despite the fifteen minutes leading up to the event being some of the most stressful and nerve wracking in his life (“You’re going to the toilet _again?_ ” Tobio had asked, completely bewildered. “Do you have diarrho-“ his sentence is abruptly cut off by Hinata shoving him into a drinking fountain.) Once Hinata steps onto the court, with a smattering of other players, including Tobio, it’s like it all melts away.

Everyone becomes a point in his vision, the ball his beacon, and within seconds of it rebounding off a player’s arms in a perfectly neat receive he starts to _run_. The net looms up fast, high and towering, until his knees bend and feet push and then he’s soaring, with all the court below him. Clear and empty, and not a blocker in sight.

 _I’m here_ , he thinks.

He swings his arm. His palm meets leather. His feet touch the floor again before the whistle even blows as the balls rolls gently on the other side of the court, untouched.

“What was _that?”_ He hears the coach’s voice say, strangled with shock, just over the roaring in his ears and he clenches his fist to look over his shoulder and share a grin of victory with Tobio, who’s shining just as bright.

_There you are._

Needless to say, they pass round one with flying colours.

“Same time next week will be the final round. Then those of you who pass _that_ … we’ll have you play with last year’s regulars. At that point I’ll be deciding the final roster,” their coach says to the group who have passed. He smiles at each of them in turn, before pointing at Hinata and Tobio. “You two, stay. The rest of you are dismissed!”

There’s a chorus of “yes sir!” and the synchronised thud of footfalls as the rest of the players leave, some of them shooting curious looks over their shoulders at the stragglers.

Hinata tries his very best not to fidget nervously on the spot, wondering wildly if he had done something wrong during the try outs, or whether the coach had changed his mind or-

He feels long fingers twine themselves into his shirt discreetly, behind his back where the coach couldn’t see, and hold fast. The touch is grounding, and Hinata feels a little of the tension in his shoulders melt away.

“Honda tells me you two met over the school break?” The coach asks with a curious frown, eyes flicking between the two of them.

They nod in unison, jerkily. 

“And that… _move_ of yours? Is it reliable?”

“Yes sir!” They confirm. Hinata’s not sure how much of it is bluster or true confidence, from either of them, but… he’s not missed one yet. That super amazing, pinpoint, lightning-fast toss. His palm tingles just thinking about it.

“I see…” their coach muses, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Interesting. You two are very interesting! I’m glad to see the both of you have found some common ground between you,” he says, warmly. “I’ll see you both next week.”

“Sir!”

“I think that went well,” Hinata states lightly as they leave the gym, and as he swivels his gaze up to find Tobio looking back down at him with a matching wobbly smile, he swears his heart swells up so much in his chest there’s no room left for his lungs, leaving him dizzy and breathless. 

Hinata all but throws himself into the kitchen as soon as they arrive home, fully intending on making the most decadent dinner he can in celebration of their ‘we-passed-the-first-round’ victory. Tobio stiltedly offers to help but Hinata shoos him from the room, insisting he’ll call if he needs anything. While his friend isn't exactly _incompetent_ in the kitchen, he _is_ big and can be oddly clumsy - at odds with his precision and grace on a volleyball court - and Hinata is used to being efficient. 

Tobio doesn’t need much persuasion to leave, and he shrugs one shoulder as he shuffles through the doorway, presumably in the direction of the living room.

Dinner preparations consume Hinata for the better part of an hour, until he gets to a part that, actually, really would be easier with two pairs of hands. 

“Tobio?” He calls, with one eye on his saucepan. 

Only silence greets him.

He frowns, straining an ear, but he can’t hear anything from the depths of the house other the gentle sizzling of his cooking. “Tobio?” He calls again.

When there was no response once again Hinata huffs and switches the heat down low to go in search. He’s almost certain Tobio hasn’t left the house – the kitchen is right next to the front door, and even with all the noise he was making it wouldn’t have muffled the sound of the door closing.

He finds Tobio in the living room, and suddenly his lungs don’t have any space again.

His friend is stretched out on the settee, completely asleep, with his head pillowed on one sofa arm and his long legs thrown over the other so his socked feet are dangling in the air. The early evening sunlight streams in through the windows, orange and warm, bathing Tobio in its glow as he sleeps. In contrast to how looked in the mornings – snoring and slack and with more than a little drool on his pillow – he looks utterly serene.

Probably because he’s just dozing, Hinata thinks to himself, borderline deliriously, as his feet move, unbidden, so that he’s standing just behind the sofa, gazing down. 

Tobio’s face is still slack, but it’s soft and composed all at once, as though someone had simply reached out and smoothed all the creases away. Now Hinata is closer, he can see the issue of Volleyball Monthly he’d apparently been reading before he dozed off – the magazine lying open across his broad chest, shifting slightly with every rise and fall of Tobio’s deep breaths. 

Stepping around so he was behind Tobio’s head, Hinata reaches out and plucks the magazine from under the other man’s hand and sets it down on the kotatsu. His fingers hover and twitch as he stays in place, hunched over Tobio, completely arrested by the man having a nap on his sofa. 

His eyes are drawn, for no real reason at all, to the strands of black, glossy hair that have fallen out of place so that they spread across Tobio’s forehead, and the last thread of control frays and snaps. He reaches out, slowly, and gently tucks them back into place, before his fingers curl tightly into a trembling fist and Hinata heaves in a shaky breath and he strides away with purpose.

Two beds. They need two beds. 

* * *

“Hey, you’re not doing anything tomorrow, right?” Hinata asks on Saturday morning when they return from their morning run.

(Tobio had won. Hinata blames his distraction around the question he was about to ask for his bitter loss.)

“No…?” Tobio replies, quirking a curious eyebrow at Hinata as he unlocks the door for them.

Hinata didn’t think he did – Tobio isn’t exactly a social butterfly, and he knows neither of them have any volleyball or college commitments. “Good! It’s Sunday – we were gonna buy you a bed, remember?”

Tobio pauses where he’s crouched in the entryway untying the laces of his running shoes. “… Oh. Right,” he says, voice stilted and strange as he stands up again to shuck off his shoes.

“We’ll have to pick a day next week they can deliver it, though…” Hinata goes on, frowning a little at Tobio’s strange response but barrelling on regardless. “One day when we both don’t have afternoon classes, I guess?”

His friend hums vaguely in reply, an inexplicably deep frown on his face. “I’m having a shower,” Tobio declares suddenly, padding down the hall without looking over his shoulder, cold and distant until the bathroom door clicks shut behind him.

Hinata blinks after him, rubbing nervous fingers through his hair as he worries his bottom lip between his teeth.

Truthfully, there’s an uncomfortably large part of Hinata that’s feeling horribly selfish in that he really, honestly, does not want to go and buy another bed tomorrow. He can’t even say it’s because he wants to save money, the only real acceptable reason for this self-centred desire. He’s just, somewhere along the course of the last week, become so _used_ to having Tobio on the other side of the bed. His snores muffled by drool dampened pillows and his stupid hair that never gets messy (and his teasing over Hinata’s morning bird’s nest) and that solid warmth as daylight starts peek in through the windows.

Even so - two roommates, even if they are also teammates and friends, do not ordinarily share the same bed, and they should, probably, go tomorrow like they planned and buy the necessary furniture.

Hinata kicks his shoes away with a grunt of frustration, unsure how to deal with Tobio’s odd response and his own feelings. He all but stomps to the kitchen to make tea, and it’s only when he’s halfway through the mug, with the sound of the shower echoing down the hall, that he starts to calm down a little.

But Tobio’s strange mood doesn’t lift for the rest of the afternoon as they both silently navigate around each other, doing chores or fetching things from the kitchen or attempting to look at the assignments they’ve already been set.

In the end, Hinata can stand the quiet no longer, and when the early evening starts to set in, he pulls on his delivery cap for the dinner-time shift and strides into the living room where Tobio is reading Volleyball Monthly.

(He’s not actually _reading_ it, he’s been looking at the same articles on the benefits of elbow braces for about half an hour now, but Hinata won’t call him out on it. Yet.)

“Hey,” Hinata calls, and Tobio hums softly, turning his head so he’s looking over the back of the sofa at him. “Come do deliveries with me.”

He means to frame it as more of a suggestion, but it comes out more like a demand, and a little crease appears between Tobio’s brows.

“Do deliveries with you?” He repeats, sounding confused.

But he isn’t scoffing or outright saying no, so, feeling emboldened, Hinata pushes on. “Yeah. Like… like _before_ , you know?”

Tobio’s frown deepens and Hinata’s heart skips over itself as he folds his arms to hide his nervous, twitching fingers. Because, secretly, in the delivery jobs he’s done since Tobio has been a human roommate rather than a feline one, Hinata has found them terribly lonely. Which is sort of stupid, he supposes, because he always did them on his own _before_ with no problems, but he really did get used to having that constant presence around his shoulders and a black shadow trotting along by his heels wherever he went.

It’s selfish, probably - yet another thing on an ever growing list of selfishness it seems.

Because Tobio is an independent person and very much _not_ a pet, and he’s under no obligation to spend any more time with Hinata than he already does but… Hinata still misses it. Misses _him_ , when he’s not there.

“I’m not… sitting on you or anything,” Tobio finally mumbles out, and then his face catches fire when he realises what he’s just said.

Hinata barks out a laugh, feeling some of the tension oozing away. “I don’t think the locals are ready for that circus act, no,” he teases as Tobio attempts to bury his burning face in the pages of Volleyball Monthly. “But come on, it’ll be fun!” A blue eye squints at him over glossy pages. “Please?”

“… Fine,” Tobio acquiesces, dropping his magazine with an air of great reluctance and rolling to his feet. Hinata cheers internally.

“I am not balancing on the back of your bike,” Tobio contests hotly five minutes later when Hinata had tried once again to convince him to stand on the rear spokes. “I’ve seen you windmill down hills like a lunatic, okay? I will definitely fall off and break something and then who will toss to you?”

“Alright, fine, I’ll stand on the back!” Hinata huffs, pushing the handlebars into Tobio’s hands.

“Can’t I just… run along beside you or something?” Tobio grumbles, but he mounts the bike nonetheless.

“Like you’ll be able to catch up when we have to go downhill,” Hinata challenges, making his way behind the bike. He flicks his eyes up to his friend to make sure he’s ready before placing his hands on Tobio’s broad shoulders. He feels the muscles underneath tense in preparation and Hinata uses that as the go ahead to brace against him as he easily climbs onto the spokes on either side of the rear tire. “See? Easy!” He declares as he rearranges his grip on Tobio’s shoulders so that he’s not leaning quite so much of his weight on them.

“Don’t you dare fall off,” Tobio threatens.

“It’ll be fine, I trust you,” Hinata says easily, and he swears he feels his friend jerk beneath his palms before Tobio is suddenly pushing off from the road and they’re off – wobbly at first as Tobio strains to keep to bike moving with two grown adults on it, but then slowly picking up speed.

The route to the restaurant is only a short distance from Hinata’s house, but it’s hilly and Tobio is practically wheezing by the time they roll up to the front door. He apparently doesn’t do a good enough job of standing off to side and looking inconspicuous, as when Hinata greets his boss and is given the meals to deliver and a list of addresses, the man ducks back inside and then he’s also presented with an extra large bag of snacks. This isn’t unusual for Saturdays, because his boss’s wife loves to treat him, but he doesn’t usually get this much food.

“For you and your friend,” his boss says with a wink, nodding over to where Tobio is attempting to look nonchalantly down at his phone while still red in the face and a little winded.

Hinata thanks his boss enthusiastically before trotting back over to Tobio, who is wheeling his bike along one handed.

“Fuck off, you can walk now,” Tobio grunts when he nears, spotting Hinata eyeing the back of the bike and pocketing his phone. “You’re way too heavy.”

Hinata resists the urge to kick his ankle by shoving the bag of snacks in his face. “Here, you can munch on these and get your energy back, you big wimp.”

Tobio looks like he wants to bite back, but, true to form, his stomach wins out and he grabs the bag with shiny eyes, clearly appeased.

Snorting with amusement, Hinata mounts his bike and starts pedalling at a speed that Tobio can slowly jog along beside him and still chew, easily keeping up with his ridiculously long legs.

The rest of the shift passes quickly, and the bag of food depletes even faster, as they take it in turns to ride the bike and shove food into their mouths. Hinata supposes he shouldn’t make a habit of this, dragging Tobio along with him, because only one of them is getting paid for this, but it is fun.

It’s fun to challenge Tobio’s quite frankly appalling sense of direction to see if he knew where any of the address they had to go to actually were. It’s fun to see which of them can keep up the best as the other freewheels on the bike down the hills, speeding ahead. And it’s slightly more tolerable than usual to shove a bike laden with hot meals up a particularly steep slope when there was someone to help you.

Hinata spends much of the evening grinning, and he thinks he spies a few soft tilts to the edges of Tobio’s mouth too out of the corner of his eye, and all too soon the shift comes to its end with their final stop.

“Thank-you very much, Ma’am, enjoy your meal,” Hinata tells his last customer – the small, older lady who lives on the crooked street by the river who’s becoming something of a regular these days. He dips into a polite bow as she closes her door and swivels on his heel to where Tobio _had_ been waiting behind him. “See, I told you I could remember where she lived!” He declares gleefully, and then blinks when he realises he’s speaking to an empty street.

“Tobio?” He calls, looking up and down the street with a confused frown. He’s about to call louder when he spots him – a few feet away standing between two houses, Hinata’s bike at his side as he gazes down at something.

Hinata jogs up to him and follows his line of sight. Down through the gap between the houses, the grass spreads out along the riverbank, dyed brown by the low, late evening sun until it reaches the slowly swirling waters of the river below. And there in the distance, as dark and silent and imposing as ever, is the witch’s skinny old house.

There’s a whisper of a sigh above him and Hinata glances up to catch Tobio’s melancholy expression.

A memory blinks across Hinata’s mind’s eye:

_“Did you really help Tobio?”_

_“That’s up to him, I suppose.”_

Hinata knocks his elbow lightly into his friend’s side. “Hey, Tobio?” He asks, and receives a questioning hum in response. “Did it help, being a cat?”

The man besides him stiffens and Hinata waits patiently, watching as the setting sun paints strips of gold across the river. For a long while it’s silent, and when watching the riverside turn burnt orange in the sunset can distract him no longer, Hinata swivels his gaze up quizzically to find Tobio staring back at him, blue eyes intense and expression thoughtful.

“Tobio?” He prompts, soft.

“I suppose it did,” Tobio replies almost immediately, just as quiet and so sudden that Hinata actually starts a little bit.

The sun is creeping down behind Tobio now, illuminating the flyaway strands of his hair and bathing him in deep, rich lighting. Mesmerised, Hinata lets his gaze drift – from the way Tobio’s clothes shift in the breeze and the shadows starting to form across his face as the sky darkens and how his eyes look so deep they’re almost indigo.

He thinks maybe that Tobio says something to him, from the way his mouth moves and his brow starts to crease, but he doesn’t hear anything, lost until suddenly something large and wet splashes on his forehead, dribbling down his face.

Hinata jolts and rubs at his nose, jerking as, steadily, more raindrops start to fall from the sky. He looks up in synch with Tobio to see the darkening sky isn’t only because of the night setting in, but from the deep black rainclouds rolling in as well.

“Of course,” Tobio punches out a sigh next to him, scowling as the rain starts to fall in earnest – fat drops pelting them both until they hunch their shoulders against the onslaught.

“We could ask Tsukishima for another umbrella?” Hinata suggests with a grin, which widens when Tobio grabs his upper arm firmly with one hand, steering his bike with the other as he leads him back to the old street.

“ _No_ ,” Tobio growls, firmly. “He’ll probably turn you into a frog, say it’ll teach you to learn how to… to jump higher or something,” he continues to grumble, and Hinata starts laughing.

Tobio looks like he wants to retort, or argue, but then his expression twitches and he snorts, frown melting away as he huffs gently beside Hinata, the sound almost lost to the fall of the rain. The sight sets glee alight in Hinata’s blood, spreading through him warm and heady and more than enough to fight away the growing chill from his steadily dampening hair and clothes.

Giving the witch’s house, only just visible now in the distance in the gloom and the rain, one last look, Hinata grabs his bike from Tobio’s slack grip and starts pushing it along, sending bursts of water up from the tires and his shoes. “Come on!” He calls behind him, hearing splashes as Tobio chases after him.

They take it in turns to push the bike along the sodden streets, neither of them trying to ride it as the rain escalates to a downpour and streams form between the cobbles beneath their feet. It’d almost be annoying if it didn’t become a game, then several games, miniature competitions of who can get down the street the fastest, make the biggest puddle, get the other one wetter.

Hinata’s too warm from exercise and joy to feel cold even though he’s soaked to the bone, his clothes clinging to him like a second skin as they amble down the final hill that slopes down to his house. He has control of his bike at the moment and he steers it through a large puddle to shoot a spray over Tobio’s already drenched jeans, which earns him a curse and a shove into another puddle.

They continue down the hill like this, until the road starts to even out and then Tobio is tugging Hinata’s bike away to lead it to where he normally chains it outside his house. Hinata stands there as rain sluices over them and watches, even though he should unlock the door and slip inside to get dry, get towels out for both of them, get dinner started, or anything at all really, rather than stand there in the pouring rain watching Tobio lock a bike chain.

His friend stands as he finishes and sweeps his sodden fringe away from his forehead with one large hand and all at once everything in Hinata’s chest stops moving. Frozen, until Tobio turns to look at him with a confused frown, probably wondering why Hinata’s just staring at him in the street as they’re pelted with rain. But all Hinata can focus on is the droplets making their way from Tobio’s temples, down his cheeks and across his jaw, before they slide down his long neck and out of sight.

“You know how we were gonna buy another bed tomorrow?” Hinata blurts suddenly, as everything all at once becomes unstuck and starts moving again at breakneck speed.

“What?” Tobio calls back, louder to be heard over the rain.

“Tomorrow!” Hinata almost shouts, and he makes his way closer so he doesn’t have to strain as hard. “We were going to buy another bed, tomorrow.”

Tobio’s frown deepens as he stares down at him, eyes bright even in the gloom. “What about it?” He asks, not sounding anywhere near as annoyed as should be, considering Hinata is keeping them outside in the pouring rain and neither of them are dry at all by now.

“What if… what if we don’t?” Hinata asks, almost breathless with how hard his chest is heaving. “What if we always just had one bed?”

All of the creases in Tobio’s face fade away all at once as he blinks in surprise, face melting into something carefully blank.

Hinata reaches up with both hands to shove his rain bedraggled hair up and away from his face and wipe at the streams of rain on his cheeks that are immediately replaced, just to have something to occupy his shaking hands. This was, potentially, a dangerous question, and Tobio probably has every right to scoff and storm off but Hinata holds his ground and blue eyes and hopes.

Because a month ago he was all alone, and the last five or so weeks have been filled with more life and joy than in the entirety of last year. And he thinks – he _knows_ – it’s been the same for Tobio too, like life was put on pause until witchcraft and the rain set everything in motion again.

He just… _likes_ Tobio. He likes how he’s stunning at volleyball, really, _breathtakingly_ good, and how they play together. He likes how he’s just competitive as he is, even over stupid things and it never feels petty or childish. He likes how he’s unintentionally funny and intentionally sweet and how he’s blunt and he never has to second guess what he’s thinking. And yes, he likes how he’s tall and handsome and the way his eyes shine too.

Perhaps it has just been a week on two legs and nearly five on four but something about it all just clicks for Hinata. And, well, he’s always been a little reckless, a little greedy, always wanting more. He could just settle for friends and roommates, but somewhere in his heart he longs for just a little _more_.

Tobio takes one step closer to him, blinking fast to shake the raindrops clinging to his eyelashes, adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “One bed huh?” He asks, quiet enough that Hinata has to strain to hear him over the thundering rain.

_“How I needed to… to trust someone.”_

The words float unbidden back to Hinata’s mind and he sways his body forward, rocking up onto his toes. “Yeah,” he says with conviction, now that Tobio’s face is closer. “I don’t think we need another one.”

There’s a brief moment of hesitation, before Tobio’s large hands are reaching for him and Hinata grabs onto the drenched shirt before him in kind, each of them closing the distance until their lips meet. He feels rough palms cradle his jaw and thumbs wiping away the rain from his face and slowly he releases his fists from soaked fabric to wind his arms around Tobio’s broad shoulders and draw him closer.

They part with a gasp, just enough to get air, foreheads pressed tightly together. Hinata shuffles himself a little closer so that they’re almost pressed in a perfect line from chest to toes, chasing Tobio’s body heat as the rain leeches his away. He feels Tobio slide a hand around his neck and cup the back of his head, fingers tangling in his sopping wet hair and pull him in gently until they’re kissing again – short, desperate little things, different from the long drawn-out feel from earlier, and Hinata’s toes curl in his sodden socks and shoes.

Abruptly, Tobio pulls back, only a small amount, to pant, “wait, wait, isn’t this weird?”

Hinata hums and says nothing, rubs his hands over Tobio’s shoulders, and waits.

“I was a _cat_ ,” Tobio says, low and in despair, and Hinata can’t help the giggle that escapes him and the silly grin that spreads over his face.

“Yeah,” he agrees, laughing, kissing Tobio’s nose, his cheeks and his eyelids as the other man starts to pout in protest. “Yeah, it’s kinda weird.” But it’s a good weird – unconventional and fantastical and utterly amazing. This is definitely a _good_ sort of weird.

Tobio sighs, soft and trembly, and he re-captures Hinata’s lips again briefly to kiss him sweet and slow. “And that’s okay?” He asks when he finishes, sounding almost shy as Hinata’s body tingles all over.

“Of course it’s okay, you big dummy,” Hinata tells him, earnest and warm, and he leans back a bit in Tobio’s arms so he can slip one hand from a broad shoulder to trace his fingers gently over Tobio’s features. The other man lets him silently as he runs his fingertips over his nose and cheeks and across his lips, skin slick from the still falling rain. He finishes by trailing his fingers along his jaw and down his neck until his hand rests against his collarbone. “I think we were always meant to find each other,” he says, voice thick and honest. “I haven’t… before you came along I was so lone-“

“I know,” Tobio interrupts, cupping Hinata’s cheek with one large hand and running his thumb along his cheekbone, sweeping away the rain. “I know. Me too.”

A strange, happy little sob wrenches its way of Hinata and he’s surging back up again, grabbing Tobio to kiss him fiercely, feeling the other man’s hands grab at him just as hard. He could’ve stayed there for hours, pressed up against Tobio in the rain, until a particularly strong breeze sends a spray up his back and ruffles his clothes and he shivers, goosebumps pricking up across his skin.

“Let’s go inside,” Tobio suggests against him and he nods.

Grabbing blindly for Tobio’s hand until he feels long fingers curl tightly against his, Hinata rummages around in his pocket for his keys and all but slams them into the lock, shoving the door open with his foot and tugging Tobio through into the entryway.

The trip to the bedroom takes far too long for two people who are completely and utterly soaked, because they both keep pausing for a kiss, a touch, a _grab_ , in amongst trying to peel off layers of waterlogged clothing.

They end up tumbling onto the bed, once they’ve divested themselves of everything but their boxers, the sheets getting damp immediately but neither of them care. Hinata’s hands are roaming, eager little things, because sure, he’s seen all of this before, all of _Tobio_ before, the very first day the man woke up in his bed, but now he can _touch_. He plants his knees on either side of Tobio below him and lets his hands wander freely as he kisses him, hot and deep.

Tobio’s hands are just as curious – rough palms across his back and sides, calloused fingerpads tracing over the grooves in his abdomen and making the muscles jump below. They eventually settle in the hollow between his neck and his shoulders, the touch grounding enough that Hinata can finally pull away (after one last tug on Tobio’s bottom lip, earning him a shiver) so he can gaze down at the man beneath him.

For once, Tobio’s hair is a mess. Bedraggled as fine, glossy strands dry themselves into knots, spread across the damp sheets below. Both of them are still slick with rain water, and the shine only compliments the flush that highlights Tobio’s skin. Hinata feels his heart twist up tight in all the best ways as he drinks him in, reaches with one hand to push the remaining strands of drenched hair away from his forehead, gazing down into those blue, blue eyes.

It seems like a lifetime ago the same ones were peering up at him from above a saucer of milk.

“I’m in love with you,” Tobio blurts out, suddenly, into the dark of the room.

Hinata’s whole body jolts, and if it wasn’t for the sturdy hand on his waist, he would’ve fallen over. “Huh?” He croaks, surprise and a fathomably deep emotion he cannot name tightening his throat.

“Sorry. I know that sounds fast, but it’s been over a month for me, and… and I just am. I think. I don’t know, maybe I’m-“ Tobio starts babbling, his previously happy expression melting into one of nerves, his body stiffening slowly beneath Hinata, his shoulders a rigid line.

It’s like someone had reached inside Hinata’s chest and sparked a fire inside – as an impossible warmth spreads through him, so fierce and happy he cannot stop the grin that splits his face or the tears that prick his eyes as he swoops down to capture Tobio’s lips again. He’s smiling so wide they don’t meet properly, and it’s more teeth than is strictly comfortable, but it’s wonderful and thrilling and _perfect_ and Hinata doesn’t think he’s ever been this happy in his life. Not even when the coach asked them back for the second round.

He feels two strong arms wind their way around his shoulders and then he’s being tugged down, until he’s flush against Tobio’s body and being rolled over so they’re on their sides. It’s a little uncomfortable, in soaked underwear and with the damp sheets below sticking to them, but Hinata has no wish at all to move, content to stay right here in Tobio’s arms.

“I’m so glad I found you,” he whispers when they finally break apart to just lie pressed together, a tangle of damp limbs and drenched hair slowly drying into a frizz.

Tobio tilts his head forward until his forehead knocks against Hinata’s, his face the softest and warmest Hinata has seen it be yet – glowing bright with happiness. “Me too,” he murmurs, as the rain outside lashes against the window panes.

* * *

Outside Hinata’s house, directly opposite, standing under the lamplight and the moon and staying perfectly dry despite the still tumbling rain, is Tsukishima.

The witch sighs, stuffing his hands in his pockets and rocks idly on his heels, waiting.

(He’s ignoring the curtain twitching from the man who lives in the house he’s standing in front of – he finds if you ignore people long enough, they will eventually leave you alone no matter how strange you are being.)

“Didn’t think of you as a Peeping Tom, Tsukki,” rumbles a deep voice from behind him and Tsukishima briefly raises his eyes to the heavens.

“Don’t call me that,” he retorts with no bite to it. “And they aren’t even doing anything.”

A tall, slim, dark haired man strolls up to stand next to Tsukishima, just as dry as the witch was, as if the rain never existed at all. “So they aren’t. Kind of sweet really.”

Across the street, visible through the windows, Hinata and Tobio can be seen strolling into the living room. Shower-fresh in warm jumpers and soft pyjama bottoms, rumpled but finally sort-of-dry, they press close together as they sit down to huddle underneath the kotatsu blanket.

“Their neighbour might start complaining soon though if they don’t pull the curtains,” the dark haired man says thoughtfully, rubbing his chin with a wry smirk as he glances over his shoulder.

Tsukishima hums, disinterested. “So, this gets you off my back for two years,” he adds eventually, once his companion had satisfied himself that the man whose house they’re standing outside of isn’t going to do anything except than spy on his neighbours.

“Two?” The other man says, smirk widening. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Because!” Tsukishima splutters, suddenly annoyed. He _always_ does this. “Two good deeds, that’s two years, Kuroo, why are you like this _every_ time…”

“ _Two_ good deeds, huh?” The man – Kuroo – says, quirking an eyebrow. “What, are you counting the little guy too?”

“He’s…” Tsukishima flicks a hand vaguely towards the window where Hinata and Tobio were curled around each other watching the television, looking vaguely disgusted under the annoyance. “He’s _happier_ now, so that counts.”

“Hmmm, I suppose he is,” Kuroo allows, tilting his head this way and that. “But you know, Tsukki,” he grins and ignores the sharp golden glare. “I think turning Kageyama there into a cat docks you a point.”

“ _Why?”_ Tsukishima growls, incensed.

“Oh like we both don’t know why you picked a black cat, of all things,” Kuroo says airily, twisting on the spot to start strolling up the hill, the still falling rain never quite managing to meet him.

“Since when has that been a rule?” Tsukishima demands, following after him and glaring daggers at the suspended raindrops around them, as though hoping he could override the magic holding them there and make them fall again through will alone.

“I’m your boss, Tsukki, I get to make all the rules,” Kuroo replies smoothly, still with that incredibly frustrating shit eating grin on his face. “Tell you what, if your little lovebirds are still together by the end of the month, I’ll give you your two years.”

Tsukishima, initially, wants to snap back, still pissed off at the other witch’s smug tone, but then he stops and smirks instead. “How about if it’s longer? What do I get then?”

Kuroo also stops and glances back over his shoulder at him, eyebrow quirked. “You’re oddly confident, this isn’t normally your… _area_ of expertise.”

“Maybe not, but my predictions are always correct,” Tsukishima says, feeling his anger drain away to be swiftly replaced by the cold thrill of victory. “And I am certain you could name any number you wished and those two would match it without any trouble, they’re certainly stubborn enough to try.”

“My, my, Tsukki, you almost sound fond of them,” Kuroo says, looking delighted as they resume their walk up the street.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tsukishima snaps, but he cannot help the edges of his smirk softening ever so slightly.

“They never did return my umbrella.”

_“I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that’s all. Just cats and rain.” – Charles Bukowski_

_The End_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finished! Holy shit it's finished.
> 
> If you read this story to here, honestly, thank-you so much. I was extremely nervous to post this one, and finishing it was an achievement I'm quite proud of. I hope you all enjoyed it, especially those of you who adore cats like I do, and I really am so incredibly grateful to every person who read this, left a kudo, a comment, talked to me on Twitter about it... sharing these each week with you was an incredible joy, which was much needed in these currently very uncertain times. Truly, thank-you so, so much <3 <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like to scream at about Haikyuu I'm over on Twitter @Emlee_J


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